


These Times (Life in Color)

by sparkjolt (infinisei)



Series: The Hold My Breath 'Verse [4]
Category: Captain America (Movies), Hawkeye (Comics), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies), Thor (Movies)
Genre: F/M, Hydra (Marvel), Memory Loss, Soul Bond, Soulmates, Therapy, WinterShock - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-06-16
Updated: 2016-07-28
Packaged: 2018-07-15 09:38:39
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 7
Words: 21,786
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/7217260
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/infinisei/pseuds/sparkjolt
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The Winter Soldier was…confused.</p><p>He had followed the pull for miles, traveling through alleyways and deserted land to keep from being tracked. With each step he took, the more insistent it became—until it was undeniable. And it had led him to <i>her</i>.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

**Author's Note:**

> My god, it's finally here. It took several months for this to come together and I am so grateful to all those who supported me through my very first completed multi-chapter fic!!! Because I've already gone through the first rounds of editing for all seven chapters, **I'll be posting on a weekly basis**. Keep in mind this was written and edited without a beta, so **if you do spot an error, please tell me**!!! I hate making errors in my own writing and if you let me know of any mistakes you find, I would be supremely indebted to you.
> 
> Happy reading!

The Winter Soldier was…confused.

 

He had followed the pull for miles, traveling through alleyways and deserted land to keep from being tracked. With each step he took, the more insistent it became—until it was undeniable. And it had led him to _her_.

 

Since then, he had kept in the shadows, watching her.

 

She was unassuming when he had first laid eyes on her—the perfect example of a civilian. She was soft and supple, with no hint of muscle on her body, but it suited her curves. Her dark hair tumbled down her shoulders and contrasted mesmerizingly with her skin. Her mouth seemed to constantly be in a smirk. Her eyes were a clear blue.

 

He couldn’t take his eyes off her.

 

He slowly learned her through her schedule, her habits. She always left her house at 7:35 in the morning every weekday, even though she looked extremely resentful of it. She would take the train to the building he could not follow (he was aware of the Avengers and that Steve was a part of it now). She would leave the building at six in the evening and, depending on her mood, would go to the grocery store to get food, a restaurant for take-out, or straight home. If she went home, then he could expect someone to come to her door to drop off food.

 

That cycle broke one night, when she left her apartment in a black dress with a sweeping neckline that fell just above her knees. Her purple pumps raised her height a good five inches and she sashayed with the confidence of a woman who knew she was a dame.

 

She danced all night in a clubhouse blocks away, without skill or knowledge of her movements. She simply felt the music and moved where it took her.

 

Knowing full well that he would be overwhelmed with the loud music and the staggering amount of variables he would try and fail to track, he stayed on the roof and peered through the skylight at his feet.

 

With his bird’s eye view, he could spot the attention she received without any effort. They would watch her unashamedly, their interest blatant. Some were innocent in their attraction to her. Others weren’t.

 

One in particular made his hackles rise and set his teeth on edge. He was the very definition of slimy, with his dirty blonde hair slicked back with too much gel and snake-like features. He lingered on every part of her figure except her face and seemed undeterred when another persistent but harmless man was quickly scared off by the taser that appeared in her hand.

 

She eventually grew tired and—not noticing her unwanted admirer—decided to walk home.

 

The darker, more ruthless part of him burned at the thought of what might happen to the source of his pull if the situation in front of him were to play out. He had stayed in the shadows for multiple reasons, but they all sailed out the window at the sight of the gleam in the man’s eyes.

 

Just because he was intent on stopping the fat-head didn’t mean he was willing for her to see him though. That was why she was safely in her apartment when he dropped in front of the blonde. The other man stumbled back in shock and his terror rose as quickly as his lust in the club as a metal hand clasped his throat and forced him to face the icy ire of the Winter Soldier.

 

After he had taken care of the scumbag, he returned to her apartment, restless.

 

His gaze landed on her open window and fire escape. Suddenly, a need roused, making itself known by consuming him bit by bit.

 

Unable to resist, he moved to the escape, silently scaling it until he reached her floor. He was in her apartment only several heartbeats later.

 

 _What was he doing?_ he berated himself. Not only was he breaking into her home, he was inviting more danger to her doorstep just after getting rid of some.

 

But at the same time…he could feel her. A current seemed to be running under his skin, making him tense and twitchy. That feeling, under normal circumstances, would cause him to immediately leave the area without a trace.

 

But in this instance? He tried to retreat, to move back into the shadows before leaving town and the state and avoiding getting caught, but he couldn’t. The current that was unceasingly under his skin, keeping him from moving back, was now coaxing him further into the house…towards _her_.

 

The TV droned on.

 

“—the fact is, these lawyers have a duty to serve their country—”

 

_“It is your duty to serve Hydra, Soldier. Do it.”_

 

_A gun in his hand, pointed at a set of doe eyes staring straight at him. He had a finger curled on the trigger and a voice in his ear._

 

_But the little girl still stared at him, her cheeks stained with tears._

 

 _“Please…” she whimpered. “_ Please _.”_

 

His mind fuzzed, teetering between past and present. Within the dueling images, he could see the girl looking at him with wide, blank eyes and a circle of red on her forehead.

 

_No._

 

He screwed his eyes shut, struggling to grasp the present and force his thoughts into order.

 

“Coming up, The Avengers: selfless heroes or lawless vigilantes? Stay tuned.”

 

He was now in the door of her kitchen. Her back was to him as she attended to the pot that was wafting the smell of cooking tomatoes, humming a stray tune to herself.

 

Without ever telling himself to do so, he was now fully in the room.

 

Not for the first time, he questioned his actions, why he couldn’t walk away. He couldn't answer.

 

She didn’t seem to notice his approach, her humming changing to a new tune. She finished stirring the tomatoes, setting down the spoon, before reaching to pick up another ingredient.

 

Suddenly, he found himself staring at the end of her taser and an angry look on her face.

 

“I don’t know who the hell you are, but I want you to know that I know the God of Thunder so it would _really_ be in your best interest to leave me alone. Because I know Thor. The God of Thunder.”

 

Taken aback at the woman he’d been hiding from for the past several weeks suddenly aware of his existence and threatening him, he was surprised he hadn’t reacted harshly towards her like he would have in any other situation. Still struggling against the current tying him to this place—to her—he fingered the knife hidden from her sight that had appeared at her abrupt turn.

 

She shifted uncomfortably at his lack of response. He could tell she hadn’t expected him to be unafraid of her threat of this Thor person. Her voice now held a touch of uncertainty.

 

“Really? You’re just going to stand there? Do you have a death wish? You want to be squished into the floor by a magical hammer?”

 

Uncertain of what to say, he didn’t say anything at all and stood there, frozen.

 

Suddenly, something popped from the stove. Darcy shrieked, jumping forward. Tripping, she careened towards the ground. Instinctively, he reached forward to catch her.

 

His hand brushed her arm.

 

The current exploded.

 

It was then that he suddenly realized what he had been missing.

 

For so long, there had been a heaviness pressing down on him. It had weighed upon him, slowing him down and muffling his senses. And after feeling it for so long—forgetting a time when that feeling didn’t exist—and ignoring any pain that could distract him from an assignment, he hadn’t even felt the weight pressing down on him, slowly suffocating him.

 

But as soon he made contact with her, electricity seared him from within, passing through each part of him and burning the weight with it.

 

He vaguely heard her make a strangled noise before she tried to jerk away from him, but as soon as that happened, the burning was replaced with the feeling of a thousand hands squeezing his throat and chest, choking him. The weight that had left him just moments before had returned tenfold and he struggled to breathe against it.

 

She must have felt the same way, because soon she grabbed his hand—his warm, human hand made of flesh and bone—and suddenly he could inhale easily again.

 

As they both gasped for air, their gazes interlocked.

 

He spoke for the first time. “What…What is this?” He would have immediately thought it was another way for Hydra to keep him under their thumb. But he had already been watching her for weeks, everything about her screamed civilian, and the burning throughout his entire being was far too genuine and _good_ for it to be Hydra.

 

Her eyes were wide as they searched his face. “You…You don’t know?”

 

His silence answered for himself.

 

“I don’t know either,” she confessed, and there was a slight relief in the fact that they were both as clueless as the other. “But…” she hesitated before a flood of words seemed to break free from her, as if she couldn’t hold the worried and questioning thoughts to herself. “I worked with scientists for a while, okay? Maybe not always ones that deal with medicine or biology, but I know enough from absently hearing about their research findings and my required high school health class that any sudden unexplainable all-consuming sensations are some change or shift in your soul. And there have been no recorded incidents of a soul changing at all unless it’s with your…soulmate.”

 

The word seemed to echo between them. His thought process halted for a second.

 

An instant denial came from his mouth. “You’re wrong. Something else happened.”

 

She cocked her eyebrow, her face falling slightly. “And you know this how?”

 

While he didn’t break her gaze, he could feel the hollowness and despair that filled him at her question hunching his shoulders. His voice held a cold certainty as he repeated what had been said to him for as long as he could remember. “Because I’m the Winter Soldier. I am an asset. I do not have a soul. I do not have a soulmate.”

 

And at his words, she caught the clenching of his left hand and for the first time, she noticed the gleaming metal. He waited with grim expectation for her to recoil, to break away from him again, preferring the suffocating weight to touching _him_.

 

Instead, her gaze softened. He blinked in surprise, then shivered as the blaze left his chest and he took the largest breath he’d ever taken in decades. Had she not heard him?

 

Before he could ask, she spoke. “Well, I’m just guessing, and my guess holds as much weight as a politician’s promises, but I do have friends who could find out—”

 

“No.”

 

She gaped at his curt answer. “No? Dude, while I’m enjoying the feeling like my soul is getting a facial cleanse, we’re kind of in uncharted territory here. I have no idea how long this is going to last, and neither do you, and I can’t really bring a shadow with raccoon eyes and black tactical gear when I go back to work on Monday—”

 

“No.”

 

She scowled at him, ignoring the hitch in her breathing and the unconscious arc of her back as the fire continued. She shifted her weight to her left leg and glared at him. “If you’re expecting me to just hole up in my home until this wacky soul stuff hopefully disappears, you’ve got another thing coming, mister.”

 

It was laughable that she seemed to think she could actually stop him, but he didn’t smile. Instead, he squared his shoulders and loomed over her. If she continued to be unwilling to avoid the authorities, he could simply take her and hide away. He would make sure that no one could find them.

 

Maybe she read a little into what he was thinking, because she switched tactics.

 

“Look, fine, I’ll make a bargain with you. I won’t get in touch with my friends to find out what’s going on. I’ll stay inside and hide out—thank Frigga I just got groceries earlier—but in return, we have to stay here. No kidnapping me and taking me to some ‘secure location,’ no drugging me before kidnapping me, no threatening me to leave with you, _nada_. I refuse to have my life become the next episode of _Criminal Minds_.”

 

He ignored the unknown reference she had made, focusing on her offer. Stay here. No kidnapping.

 

“Okay,” he said without his permission, without thinking about any of the possible dangers of remaining in her apartment.

 

It was too late to take it back, though. Her eyes had already lit up at his acceptance. “Okay?”

 

He had no choice but to nod.

 

She grinned in triumph. “Awesome.”

 

After that was settled, an awkward silence fell upon the two. His fingers twitched with the pinpricks of heat dancing through his veins. What was he supposed to do now?

 

She found the answer before he did. “I’m Darcy, by the way.”

 

 _Darcy_.

 

He didn’t acknowledge the offering of information. There was nothing to say. He could tell she was expecting for him to give her his name, but he didn’t know what it was.

 

_Your name is Bucky Barnes._

 

 _Stop it._ He blocked that stray memory. That wasn’t who he was. At least, not anymore.

 

After a few seconds of silence from him, it was clear she realized he wasn’t giving her a name. Despite the awkward tilt of her lips and the obvious uncertainty she was feeling, she tried again. “Well, I was just about to put on some Netflix. You ever watch _Orange Is The New Black_?”

 

At his silence, she gasped. “You haven’t watched it? Oh, buddy, are you in for a delightful masterpiece.”

 

With that, she was dragging him to the couch in front of her TV with their clasped hands. During the trip, they both stumbled slightly in synchronicity at a spasm in their legs. Flexing the muscles in his thigh, he watched her—Darcy—determinately straightening through the brief pain before pulling him the rest of the way. He stood uncertainly in front of the couch and with a huff she used her free hand to push him. Blocking any worries of an attack sitting unprepared, he let her propel him onto the couch.

 

Satisfied with his position, she stretched her arms—one still holding his hand—so that she could grab the remote on the other side of the couch. She fell onto the couch with a sigh, keeping their contact limited to their clasped hands with a foot of space in between them, and pressed a couple buttons to change the screen of the reporters to a black one with boxes of different images. She selected one, and then he found himself following the story of a group of women in prison. As the show continued, he watched his seat partner from the corner of his eye. She was completely enraptured with the characters, grinning before every joke and scowling at any characters she disliked. Occasionally, the inferno would smolder and a shudder would pass between the two, but eventually she was fighting a yawn and slouching into her seat. It didn’t take very long before she was out, sleeping softly. _Orange Is The New Black_ continued on.

 

Suddenly, she made a noise before shifting, gravitating towards him before curling into his side.

 

He froze, her unexpected closeness changing the slow burning within him to a warm caress, like a flame passing harmlessly against his skin. The pleasure of the aftermath took his breath away.

 

He expected her to wake up from the mirrored feeling, but she simply sighed in relaxation, and he could almost feel her sinking into a deeper sleep.

 

This…This was what he had missed while on ice, on assignments. Ever since he had broken their control over them, he only had one mission: find out who he was. He had thought that the pull had been some part of himself knowing where to find answers to that question. Instead, he had found something much more remarkable and precious.

 

Now, his memories—his identity—were secondary. Yeah, he wanted to know who he was, but he had made a deal with her and he couldn’t find it within himself to break it.

 

At that, he closed his eyes and fell into a dreamless sleep.


	2. Chapter 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Whew! Here it is, as promised: the next chapter. You all were amazing sending your love and support this past week... Thank you!

He came to between one instant and the next.

 

There was a moment of disorientation and he had no idea where he was. A blank television was in front of him, hanging on a white wall with a bookcase underneath it.

 

He felt the warm weight pressing against his side. Tilting his head down, he breathed in the scent of rosemary and mint from chocolate curls trailing across his chest.

 

_Darcy._

 

It was then he realized the flames within him were completely gone. In its place was a feeling of lightness, as if his weight had been reduced from a bag of concrete to a single feather.

 

He felt as if he could move three times faster, run two times longer, and lift another hundred pounds of weight without any trouble. He felt… _incredible_.

 

The feeling made him stiffen and want to curl in on himself. Despite the gaps in his memory and not knowing his own identity, he somehow knew for certain that this was the best he had felt in a long time. Possibly his entire life. During his time as the Asset, it was unnecessary for him to be given rest or pleasure or comfort. The only rest he needed was given to him when he went on ice, and, despite it not being told to him directly, he knew the reason he didn’t receive rest outside of the time given to him was because he didn’t deserve it. And since he’d been free of Hydra, his suspicions had only solidified into certainty with each new fragment of memory he remembered.

 

The woman curled into him stirred slightly, shifting to drape her arm across his chest. A rapid flutter of irritation dashed across his consciousness before relaxing into bone-deep contentment. Contentment that was not his own.

 

That was when he panicked.

 

Darcy woke up abruptly, taking some time to recognize her surroundings. She greeted him by slurring, “Oh, ‘s you.” She stretched languidly and seemed to realize their intimate proximity. She scrambled away hastily and her eyes widened. He felt her shock and awe at a few of the results left from the burning ripple through to him. “Oh!” Her hands flew to her chest. “I…guess you were right about not having to worry about _that_ staying through Monday.”

 

She didn’t notice the dangerous stare of the Winter Soldier.

 

“So, you want breakfast? I could whip up some kickass pancakes.”

 

And as she waited for his response—even when knowing his horrible track record for answering any of her questions—she finally seemed to discover all of the new changes that had arrived with the end of the cleansing. He effortlessly plucked the emotions coming from her. Curiosity. Suspicion. Shock. Confusion. But the one that drowned them all was the bright, unfettered joy.

 

The signs of her inner turmoil were all over her face.

 

That threw him for a loop. As soon as he fully comprehended the level of binding that had occurred, his belief that she was not a threat had shattered. What he had believed to be an innocent, inevitable event had now become another way for Hydra to bind him permanently.

 

But now that he had a moment to distance himself, he could see the flaws in his assessment. What was the point of controlling him when he could feel her emotions? And if she truly were Hydra, then why did her emotions seem so pure, with no undertone of darkness or vindictiveness?

 

Darcy Lewis seemed to have made it her mission to continue surprising him. Instead of confronting him, she simply walked towards the kitchen, talking to him over her shoulder. “C’mon. If we’re going to have pancakes, I demand that you help me. It’s one of the Lewis family rules, and you’re in my apartment, so...”

 

She left him in the living room with a choice again. Stay, and risk the possibility of capture and a return to the life he’d been living for as long as he could remember. Or, leave and never understand the connection between Darcy and himself.

 

And then, miraculously, his eyes fell upon a wall that had dozens of framed photos on them. Some were of friends and family, but one…

 

One made him twitch at the sight of something so familiar.

 

_He whistled loudly as he looked up and kept on looking up. He had his head fully craned back when his gaze made it to the top. “Shit, that’s high.”_

 

_Next to him, a group of ladies within earshot gasped at his profanity. Turning towards the source of the cursing, their mouths dropped open at the sight of him, their eyes taking in every inch of him—from his face to lower and lower. Confident from their appreciation, he grinned and gave them a wink. They tittered and clustered together._

 

_A man stood next to him, his frame worryingly small and frail with pale skin and loose limbs. The clothes hanging off him only made him look smaller and sicker. His eyes, though, shone with a toughness that belied his physical features. He shot a glare at him with those eyes._

 

_He shrugged. “What? The building’s fucking tall.”_

 

_“Language,” the sickly man said, scandalized. “There are ladies present.”_

 

_“C’mon, Stevie,” he cajoled, “can’t help myself when I’m marveling over the tallest building in the world.”_

 

 _On the block across from them, the Empire State Building stood proud and tall. It towered over Steve and—and_ Bucky _._

 

_Steve trailed his eyes up. “It is amazing,” he murmured. His fingers twitched and Bucky knew he was wishing he had a pencil and paper to draw the lines of the building._

 

_Bucky hummed in agreement. “Glad we came here to see it.”_

 

_“And spent more than half our wages?”_

 

_“Hey, I wasn’t the one who spent half of that on a pretty face,” Bucky protested._

 

_“She was homeless and needed money for food,” Steve defended himself._

 

_“That and she was flashing those baby blues at you and you couldn’t resist?” he countered with a smirk._

 

_Steve glowered at him half-heartedly. “Jerk.”_

 

_“Punk.” Bucky clapped the blonde on the shoulder._

 

_A horn sounded a few blocks away. Angry shouting from drivers filtered in from behind them._

 

_“You think we’re going to find them?” Steve asked suddenly._

 

_“Hm?”_

 

_“Our soulmates.”_

 

_Bucky blinked in surprise. “You’re seriously doubting you’re going to find the person you’re guaranteed to meet?”_

 

_Steve shrugged, his head ducking slightly._

 

_Incensed now, Bucky tugged his best friend’s arm to face him. “The hell’s gotten into you?” he barked. “That asshole you were giving a beating yesterday knock some sense outta you?”_

 

_Steve tried to wrench his arm away. “No!”_

 

_“Then what brought this on?”_

 

_Steve stared uncertainly at a couple of passersby. “It’s just…I dunno. Call it a moment of doubt.”_

 

_Bucky let his hand drop. “Well, stop it. We’ll find them eventually. And hopefully yours will be enough of a spitfire to knock some sense into you.”_

 

_“And hopefully yours will be enough of a hard boiled gal to slap your filthy mouth when it comes out.”_

 

_Bucky ruffled Steve’s head playfully. “Punk.”_

 

_“Jerk.”_

 

_Steve clapped his best friend on the shoulder. The two began walking down the street._

 

_“I wonder what it’s like,” Bucky mused. “The soul bond. ‘Ma always describes it as this world-changing thing, but really…is it really so perfectly permanent?”_

 

_“Of course it is.” Bucky found it funny that even when Stevie doubted his ability to bond, he considered the process unquestionable. “The soul exchange has been happening for thousands of years and hasn’t ever been broken. No one's ever managed to create a soul shift on their own; it just happens and we know it was meant to be forever.”_

 

_Bucky sighed. “Yeah, yeah…Well, regardless of the real nature of fucking soulmates, at least we know that we’ll always be together.”_

 

_“Because you’re with with ‘till the end of the line.”_

 

_Bucky smirked. “And don’t you forget it.”_

 

James shakily traced the edges of the building that had unlocked his memory. The Empire State Building looked exactly the same but not—the one in the photo was in full color and looked more worn than in his flashback.

 

Abandoning the frame, he trailed after Darcy. Appearing in the kitchen, he gazed at Darcy as she pulled the ingredients she needed for pancakes from her pantry. She noticed his presence as she set down the mixing bowl.

 

She flashed him a small smile. “Ready to make some fuck-awesome pancakes?”

 

He stepped further into the room.

 

She shoved the mixing bowl into his stomach and his hands came up to hold it. “I’ll put in the ingredients. You mix.”

 

He began stirring automatically, pausing incrementally when she poured ingredients in.

 

“That photo of the Empire State Building…When did that happen?”

 

“Oh, my parents and I made a trip to NYC and saw all the big sights. Unfortunately, I was in a _Kim Possible_ phase so I was wearing all this _Kim Possible_ stuff and pretending to be her. Drove my parents crazy.”

 

He nodded faintly (though he had no idea who Kim Possible was), handing her the bowl when she motioned for it. He watched her pour the batter into a pan.

 

“What about you?”

 

He cocked his head questioningly.

 

“When did you first visit the Empire State Building?”

 

He dropped his head, his hair falling into his face.

 

“Oh, I’m sorry,” her voice was contrite. “With the way you were talking about it, I’d assumed you’d seen it and had a good story.”

 

He released a tense breath.

 

An awkward silence fell. She turned to stare at the pancakes cooking.

 

Feeling her discomfort, he felt an unexplainable pull towards her. Struggling to muffle it, the urge morphed into something else and escaped. “I don’t remember.”

 

“What?”

 

He flexed his fingers. “Don’t remember when it was.”

 

Her answering “Oh” was colored with an unexpected reassurance. Her body was now partly angled towards him.

 

She had misunderstood his explanation. He knew he could have stopped there, let her think her conclusion was correct, but an unpleasantness in his stomach at the thought changed his mind. “Don’t remember much of anything.”

 

“I’m…not sure what you mean.”

 

He gritted his teeth when the words struggled to form.

 

Finally, he spat out, “Memories, who I was before, were distractions. They needed me to focus on the missions.”

 

She stared at him, a dawning horror entering her eyes.

 

He repeated lowly, “Don’t remember much of anything.”

 

A gale of blinding fury hit him fast and hard. He flinched, shrinking at her rage, wondering if he shouldn’t have spoken.

 

He glanced up to see Darcy’s savage expression in the morning light, her grip on the spatula punishing. In that moment, she looked as fierce as a lioness, ready to slaughter her enemies. He changed his question of if he had spoken too much into a certainty.

 

The absence of anger came as suddenly as it had come. Sorrow and disquiet and grim determination replaced it. She walked up right into his space, making sure she had his attention before enunciating, “Well, fuck them and fuck the missions. You never have to do another mission again, you hear me?”

 

Caught in her intensity, he managed a weak nod.

 

Satisfied, she spun around and marched back to the stove. “Shit, I burned the pancakes.”

 

And as she muttered and cursed and scraped the blackened pancakes into the trash, he offered her the bowl of batter and stood close as she started over.

 

There were no more questions about her true intentions, no more thoughts of leaving.

 

******

 

Despite not knowing each other at all, they relaxed somewhat around each other within the next couple of days.

 

By ten o’clock in the morning, she would stumble into the kitchen and beeline to the coffeepot. After she had her share, she would cook them breakfast with help from him (he actually stared at her as if she was mad when she handed him a knife and told him to chop up the fruit) and would serve extra helpings of everything for him to eat. Then, she would grab her laptop and play with it on the couch for a few hours with the news playing on the TV in the background.

 

Lunchtime would involve leftovers of last night’s dinner. She would talk over the uncomfortable silences, telling him of little snippets of her life. He listened and ate whatever she pushed at him.

 

During the afternoons, she would turn on Netflix and educate him on more _Orange Is the New Black_. Sometimes in the middle of an episode, she would get a call and go into the other room to answer. He would sit still, listening to her chat briefly with someone named “Janie” or “Boss Lady.” She never mentioned him, much to his relief.

 

For dinner, she would either cook or get takeout. He would help with the cooking if she was making dinner; if she ordered in, he would hide in her kitchen while she collected the food from the deliverer.

 

After eating, she would pull out a book and read out loud. The first night, she had asked if he would be okay with listening to _The Martian_. She sensed his lack of aversion to the idea, so she opened it to the first page and started. And after some time just listening to her soft, husky voice bringing the man stranded on an isolated planet and forced to survive to life, he would relax for a moment, the storm in his head calming.

 

A few chapters later, she would wish him goodnight and head into her bedroom to sleep. Unable to do the same, he would sit beside the extra pillows and blankets she had given him to sleep on the couch and simply listen to the sounds of New York City at night.

 

Then the cycle would start all over again.

 

All the while, their little insights into one another’s emotions remained. From her, he simply sensed curiosity, concern, a niggling worry, and every once in awhile that damned euphoria that had overcome her since the first time their bond had settled. He wasn’t certain what she caught from him, and the mystery of it caused him to agonize over it.

 

That only added to the stress from turning over the main question in his mind over and over again: Why? Why did she let him stay here without any knowledge of who he was and no intention of finding out?

 

By Saturday night, he couldn’t help but ask. “Why are you doing this?”

 

She stopped reading. “Doing what?”

 

He waved a hand. “Doing...this. Lettin’ me stay here without knowing squat about me. Cooking for me and letting me sleep in your home but not telling anyone.”

 

She raised her eyebrow at him. “I thought you didn’t want anyone to know you were here,” she fired back at him.

 

He scowled at her. She grinned at her wit before sobering. “Look, I know you said you didn’t have a soulmate because you don’t deserve it or some other bullshit reason, but I know better. Deep down, you’re really panicking and scared and distrustful and feel so broken right now that you’re my soulmate. Because you _are_ my soulmate, regardless of what anyone tells you or me, and I think you’re finally starting to believe it. I know without asking that you’ve had a shitty time and not all of it’s on you. So, you’re damned right I’m going to cook for you and let you sleep on my couch and read aloud to you. Because you’re my soulmate and you deserve anything that gives you the tiniest bit of peace.”

 

Once again, the Winter Soldier found his world shift on its axis by a woman named Darcy Lewis.

 

Thankfully, she wasn’t looking for a response after that speech; she went back to _The Martian_ and he went back to listening while memorizing her features.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Subscribe, kudos, and comment! Also, stay tuned on [my Tumblr account](https://infinisei.tumblr.com/) for news about this series and excerpts of future chapters.


	3. Chapter 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you for the buckets and buckets of the support! Love you all...

“You have to leave tomorrow?” he asked carefully.

 

It was Sunday night and they were once again seated on the living room sofa; they had finished the first season of _Orange Is the New Black_ , but Darcy had decided that he needed education in other areas of pop culture. As a result, they were now several minutes into _Mean Girls_.

 

“Yes,” she said carefully. “I was supposed to go on a business meeting last Wednesday and come back on Friday. But since it got cancelled, Pepper gave me time off. I promised her I’d be back tomorrow.”

 

He took his time processing that. If she had to leave the sanctuary they had built in the past few days, where did that leave him? Them?

 

As if answering his question, she said, “You’re more than welcome to stay here if you want. While I’m away.”

 

Did he want to stay here?

 

It’s not as if he had anywhere to go. “Thank you,” he rumbled.

 

Her answer was a smile.

 

That’s when it all went to hell.

 

A creak sounded in the hallway that made his hair stand up and the Soldier stir. Instantly, he was off the couch, senses flaring and a handgun already in his hands. Alarm vibrated from Darcy through their connection and he brought his other hand up to press his index finger to his lips, shushing her.

 

Silence fell.

 

He leaned down to whisper in her ear. “Ambush. Put down your computer and follow me to the kitchen.”

 

She nodded mutely and followed his instructions.

 

He had set her crouching next to the kitchen’s island when the door blew open. He gave one last order: “Stay here until I tell you to move.”

 

A half dozen men filed in, dressed in full tactical gear and heavily armed. They began sweeping the living room, searching for them. Further away, he could hear the movements of another team prepping to enter from the hallway and the screeching of tires indicating more filing in from the street.

 

Somewhere in the back of his mind, he acknowledged the grim amusement that came from knowing that they had underestimated the Winter Soldier.

 

He waited for one of the goons to enter the kitchen before striking, shooting him quickly in the head, then holding him up as a shield to concentrate on eliminating two of the other men. They both went down quietly.

 

The others didn’t, trying to shout their position while drawing up their weapons. They were too slow; he threw his lifeless shield at one of them and he was pinned to the floor with a grunt. Seconds later, he ensnared the one closest to him at his neck, choking him as he shot his fourth goon square in the forehead.

 

The last guard panted in fear as he strained to push his fallen comrade off of him. The Soldier aimed the barrel. The goon snarled, “Hail—”

 

He squeezed the trigger. The Hydra goon fell, lifeless.

 

The entire confrontation had lasted all of twenty seconds. Knowing that the second team would be soon to follow, he worked quickly, stripping weapons from the men he had just killed while staying out of sight of the windows overlooking the street below.

 

Static sounded from the first goon. Pausing at the sound, his eyes quickly assessed the body, zeroing in on the radio at his hip.

 

He had just pulled the radio and the earphones when an object rolled into the room. Barely pausing in his movement, he kicked the sphere back into the hallway just before it began hissing out a dark gray gas. Despite the failure to cover their entrance, the second team began filing in. The Soldier managed to shoot the first one down, but was forced to evade the gunfire that answered.

 

He made the split-second decision to remove the second team by close combat before he acted. Pulling a throwing knife from his arsenal, he sank the knife into the soldier covering the other’s shoulder. Reeling back with a cry, the enemy paused firing long enough for him to cross the distance between them and knock him into the apartment hallway with a crippling blow. Then, he was on the remaining members of the squad, knocking away guns and grappling. It wasn’t long until the rest of them were on the ground with their throats slit.

 

The Winter Soldier remained standing, panting slightly from the exertion. He coldly gazed at the bodies littering the floor when another’s fear caught his attention.

 

Darcy was still in the kitchen. Her terror had gone unnoticed by him during the fight, but now it was clear as day, mingling with an almost crippling worry.

 

When he rounded the corner of the island to where she was hiding, he barely had time to take in her pale face. Upon seeing someone enter her line of sight, she instinctively aimed her taser at him. Upon recognizing him, she visibly slumped in relief, her worry dissolving into relief but her fear remaining. A distracting thought teased his concentration: had she been worrying about him?

 

He shook the thought away. Now was not the time to wonder.

 

“Are you okay?” she whispered, asking even though she was already raking her eyes down his figure, checking for injuries.

 

“I’m not compromised.” He pulled the earphones still connected to the radio he stashed in his belt and put one of them in his ear. The angry sound of Russian immediately filled his ears, and he began mapping out the new extraction plan they were executing.

 

He held out a hand for her. “Come on.”

 

Tentatively, she accepted his offered hand and rose. “Are we safe?”

 

“Not yet. We have to leave now.”

 

He pulled her out of her apartment and into the hallway. “Stay close,” he warned.

 

He led her to the staircase and began ascending the steps.

 

“Um, shouldn’t we be going down?” she whispered.

 

He shook his head, hushing her. Suddenly, a bang was heard from below, followed by the thuds of footsteps on the floor. Another team had entered and were headed up the stairs.

 

His eyes met with hers. A silent conversation passed between the two.

 

 _Do you trust me?_ his eyes asked.

 

 _Yes_ , hers answered.

 

Even if it meant his own death, he would get her out of here. Because she mattered.

 

Soon, they found themselves on the roof.

 

He quickly assessed their surroundings before finding what he wanted: the roof to a building south of Darcy’s apartment. It was three stories below from where they were standing, but the extraction teams were focused on Darcy’s building. Fortunately for the Soldier and Darcy, the only windows available in Darcy’s building were angled with awnings so that it was challenging for anyone inside to get a clear view up. There were no eyes to see them jumping to the next building.

 

“So, what’s the plan?” Darcy asked breathlessly.

 

He kept it simple. “I’ll jump to that roof. You follow. I’ll catch you. The buildings are close enough together that we can get out of the two-block blockade they’ve set up quickly and not be spotted.”

 

“You’re joking.” One look at his face and a sense of how serious he was from the connection and she knows he wasn’t. Her fear ratcheted up a notch. “You can’t be serious! I can’t jump that! I’ll miss the landing or something and then splat on the ground like an unprotected egg in a science experiment!”

 

“I’ll catch you.” They were running out of time.

 

“You’ll _catch_ me?” she said in disbelief.

 

Impatient, he stepped towards her with an intensity that caught her off guard. He stared into her eyes. “Yes. I _will_ catch you.”

 

A couple of heartbeats later, she nodded breathlessly, her eyes still locked on his. He broke away first, the intensity of the emotion between them overwhelming him.

 

He sprinted to the end of the roof, the wind blowing his hair out of his face, and then he was falling, gravity turning his stomach.

 

When his feet hit the ground, he rolled with the impact, stopping at a crouch. The earphones fell out of his ears with the turbulence. Forgetting them for the moment, he pulled himself to his feet and turned to look up.

 

He found her peeking down at him anxiously, her arms crossed over her chest. He gestured for her to come down and she nodded with great resignation.

 

Soon, she was sailing towards him, her arms and legs flailing in panic and her hair streaming out from the wind.

 

He caught her easily by the waist.

 

The Soldier gently set her down on her feet. She swayed slightly, looking slightly dazed, and he steadied her.

 

“You okay?” he asked.

 

She nodded mutely, eyes still wide.

 

Before he could usher her along, there was a shout from above.

 

He snapped his head up in time to see a Hydra goon peering down on them. His gun was aimed at Darcy.

 

The Soldier reacted without thought. One second he was standing, the next he was knocking her to the ground, his body covering hers. He felt the impact of the bullet on his back more than the sound of the shot.

 

Darcy screamed.

 

He knew immediately from the pain that the bullet didn’t hit flesh; a normal person would’ve been left with several broken ribs, but the serum made it so that it had simply bruised a few ribs.

 

He ignored the pain, twisting to shoot the gunman.

 

Before he could pull the trigger, though, a winged figure arced out of the sky and knocked his target off his feet.

 

The shape then contorted, aiming down towards them.

 

The Soldier immediately was up with his gun aimed at the approaching figure. He stood in front of Darcy, who was still on the ground.

 

The winged man landed several feet away, the plates in the wings collapsing to tuck the wings away.

 

The man raised his arms in a surrender position. “Easy, man. I’m one of the good guys. You know, Falcon?”

 

The Falcon’s reassurances had Darcy sitting up. The Soldier mentally urged her to take cover again.

 

“Get out of our way,” the Soldier growled.

 

The other man shook his head. “Sorry, man, I can’t do that. I’m supposed to bring Darcy Lewis in under the protection of the Avengers.”

 

The Soldier tightened his grip on the gun. “If you know what’s good for you,” his voice dropping even deeper with his threat, “you’ll get out of our way.”

 

Darcy was now standing behind him. She laid a tentative hand on his metal arm. “Hey, I think it’s okay. He’s an—”

 

The rest of her words were drowned out by the sound of a clap of thunder. Another figure dropped out of the sky. His long blonde hair ruffled in the wind with his red cape. A hammer was in his hand. “Lady Darcy!”

 

“Thor!” Darcy cried out in relief. She was about to move around the Soldier to meet the newcomer, but he stopped her. “Dude, it really is okay. Thor’s that God of Thunder I mentioned before, remember?” Her voice held a greater certainty than moments ago.

 

He still kept his weapon up, wary.

 

“Know this, warrior,” the man with the hammer declared, “if you do not allow the Lady Darcy to come with us, you shall feel the wrath of Mjolnir!”

 

“Thor, you are so not helping!” Darcy hollered. “Gimme a second.”

 

She then lowered her voice. “Look, dude. You protected me from getting killed or who knows what by those Hydra goons in a way that I could never have done. You got me out of that building alive and in one piece and I will always be grateful for it. But, the thing is, Hydra found my apartment. They’ll be looking for us. And while I have no doubt that you’d be able to keep us safe on the run, I’d really rather not have to sleep in a new crappy motel every night and constantly look over my shoulder. And I don’t think you want to either.”

 

She wrapped her hand around his left wrist. His metal wrist. “You can trust the Avengers. I’ve known Thor for a while now, and I would trust him with my life unquestionably. And I trust him and his teammates to make sure that you’re safe and protected from any threats out there.

 

“I’ll be with you the whole time. I promise.”

 

He felt her sincerity and truth in what she was saying. He considered the options in front of him and Darcy’s pleading face.

 

Slowly, he began lowering the gun. He loosened his grip on her.

 

As a quinjet landed on the rooftop for them, her whispered “Thank you” echoed in his head.


	4. Chapter 4

The flight was tense.

 

After the quinjet took off and was at cruising altitude, Darcy tried to convince the Soldier to allow the Falcon to give him medical attention.

 

While he trusted Darcy enough to be taken to a new location by the men, there was no way he would allow himself to be treated by one. “No.”

 

“No? Dude, you got shot. It could be bad. At least let him take a look at it.”

 

“I’m not compromised. I don’t need medical attention.”

 

She made a complicated face and pushed a dozen different emotions at him. “Just because you’re not compromised doesn’t mean you shouldn’t need help. If you’re hurt, then you should be treated, and you can’t claim that you’re not hurting. I know.”

 

Knowing what she said was wrong, he remained silent.

 

Before she could say anything else, Thor entered the cabin from the cockpit. The Soldier watched his movements, ready for the warrior to attack.

 

Thor was relaxed in a way that showed his confidence in his safety around the Soldier. He only focused on Darcy. “I am most pleased that you are safe and well. When the alert came from your apartment, I feared the worst.”

 

She flashed him a comforting smile and leaned back into her seat. “How did you guys even know that I was in trouble?”

 

“Stark,” was his simple response. “He built a system of security for his subjects of importance.”

 

Darcy huffed. “Of course it was Stark,” she muttered. “Still, I guess I can’t complain about it now.”

 

“Aye, I am extremely grateful that such precautions were taken,” Thor said solemnly.

 

“Was anyone else harmed during the raid?” Darcy asked anxiously.

 

“JARVIS?” Thor called out.

 

“Unfortunately, there were two casualties during Hydra’s assault,” a calm voice with an English accent filtered in through the speaker system of the quinjet.

 

An immense tidal wave of sadness and loss had the Soldier instinctively reaching for her.

 

She blindly reached for his hand on her forearm, clinging to his support.

 

When she was calm enough, she asked, “What were their names?”

 

“Daniel Jones and Jennifer Adams, Miss Lewis.” The voice held a tone of sympathy.

 

She mouthed the names. Seeing her grief for complete strangers—strangers that had died because of Hydra’s search for him—had his gut tugging in guilt. They had been after him and they wouldn’t have died if he had left when he should have.

 

Noticing his chance in mood, she curled his fingers into her grasp. Their roles had shifted suddenly; she was now comforting him instead of him comforting her.

 

Thor watched it all, his expression unreadable. Once Darcy caught his gaze, she looked away, a blush matching her sudden self-awareness.

 

“We will ensure that their families are cared for,” was all Thor said.

 

Darcy nodded in fierce agreement. The Soldier had a feeling that she would organize the funerals herself if she had to.

 

Soon, the quinjet was landing, and the Soldier and Darcy followed the two Avengers out onto the landing.

 

When he saw who was waiting for them on the ground, he froze.

 

“Вы готовы прийти, солдат?” the redhead from the bridge asked him. Her eyes were cold and assessing.

 

His jaw was clenched so tight that he could barely swallow, trying to sort out the mess in his head. “я знаю тебя.”

 

“Уже давно, да. Вы готовы прийти от холода?”

 

He fell silent, wary.

 

Darcy spoke up. “Um… Does anyone want to tell me what’s going on?”

 

The redhead switched to English. “I’m here to take you two to medical for an evaluation.”

 

He was beginning to feel tired of people wanting him to be examined. “ _No_.”

 

Darcy, reminded of their unfinished argument, turned back to him with even more fire. “Dude, _c’mon_. You need that gunshot wound looked at.”

 

“I’m fine. It’ll heal.”

 

Darcy looked as if she was about to explode into a passionate rant, but the redhead interrupted.

 

“Soldier, if you two are connected, then there’s the possibility of your hurts passing onto her. There could be permanent damage.” She didn’t bother to elaborate further, nor did she indicate where she had gotten that information from.

 

He gritted his teeth, knowing when he was cornered with no way to escape. He spit out, “Fine.”

 

Darcy gaped at him. The redhead gave him a nod, then turned with a “follow me” behind her shoulder.

 

The Soldier stalked behind her, knowing that if he didn’t, he would realize what he was getting himself into. A moment later, he heard Darcy’s footsteps as she hurried to catch up. The Falcon and Thor didn’t follow.

 

He was fine until he was in front of the entrance to the medical room. He halted abruptly, barely noticing Darcy crashing into his back with a light _oomph_.

 

The redhead said, “I’ll leave you here. Please make sure you meet with Hill and I for a debrief on what happened over the past few hours by tomorrow.” The beeping from the elevator indicated her departure.

 

Staring at the white walls, sterilized surfaces, medical chair, and equipment behind the transparent doors caused a creeping sensation to crawl up his spine. Dozens of flashes of _fear_ and _despair_ and _pain_ taunted him.

 

A soft hand touched his arm—his metal arm. “Hey,” she said softly. He couldn’t move his eyes to her. The crawling feeling worsened, spreading to wrap around his throat. He had to work hard to breathe against it.

 

Through the increasing panic, he felt a hand on his cheek and a soft envelopment of his soul that radiated reassurance and comfort. He tore his eyes away from the room and focused on her.

 

“ _Hey_ , you’re okay,” she murmured to him, now that she had his attention. “No one else is going to harm you in there. They just want to make sure you’re okay like I do.”

 

Dazed at the feeling—the feeling as if he were on a cloud, that nothing could harm him—he could only tilt his head into her hand and think about how much he didn’t want to go into that room.

 

“I know you don’t want to, but I’ll be with you the whole time.”

 

And knowing that she would be there, that she would keep her promises about him being kept safe, caused him to nod in agreement into her palm.

 

Her lips curved into a smile. She dropped her hand from his face, but she moved to stand next to him, her grip on his hand and her embrace of his soul remaining. Her silent support gave him the strength to step into the medical wing and stay there.

 

A woman with delicate Asian features and hair pulled into a twist on her head stood at a holographic screen. At their entrance, she looked up and gave them a friendly wave. “Sergeant, Miss Lewis,” she greeted them, “I’m Dr. Helen Cho and I’ve been asked to do a full examination.”

 

At the sight of a lab coat, he began to tense, his anxieties beginning to invade the blanket of calm that Darcy had chased away for a moment.

 

Her grip on his hand tightened and she brought her other hand up to cradle his arm in solace.

 

She rose on to her tiptoes to murmur in his ear. “You’re okay, you’re okay. I’m here. You’re safe. She won’t hurt you.”

 

He took a breath, forcing himself to calm. Dr. Cho looked at him in understanding.

 

“Maybe I can go first,” Darcy volunteered.

 

Dr. Cho acquiesced immediately. “Of course. Just sit on the table and we can get started.”

 

Darcy easily hopped onto the paper-covered seat, her legs swinging cheerfully back and forth.

 

The doctor stepped up next to her and proceeded to check her heartbeat, blood pressure, and joints. She drew a vial of blood and went to feed it into a machine several feet away before returning.

 

She pushed a cart with a machine sitting dormant on it and said, “We’re going to check your energy levels now. If you could lie on the table and stay still, please.”

 

Darcy hummed in acknowledgement.

 

Dr. Cho began tapping on the machine’s controls. It hummed to life and a piece broke off to hover at Darcy’s head. With a chirping sound, the device shed a thin line of light and began to move down Darcy’s body.

 

Once it reached her feet, the beam shut off and the gadget flew back to its home.

 

“Data coming up now with the blood work,” Dr. Cho announced.

 

Another holographic screen appeared with an outline of Darcy’s figure with pulsing yellow light appearing all throughout her body. At her chest was a blue light pulsing out of sync to its counterpart. The blue light branched from her chest into her arms, legs, fingers, and toes and up into her head. It looked as if a system of tree roots spread throughout her body, centering at her torso. Other data the Soldier couldn’t discern appeared next to the figure.

 

Dr. Cho looked at the results, muttering to herself and taking notes on a holographic pad. Darcy sat up to peer at the results herself.

 

The doctor finally turned to Darcy. “Miss Lewis, when did you bond with your soulmate?”

 

Darcy coughed. “Well, I’ve never actually _officially_ soulbonded.”

 

Her tone called Dr. Cho to focus all her attention on her patient. “Officially?” repeated Dr. Cho.

 

She leaned back on to her hands. “I’ve never experienced a soulbond, but I recently had a soulshift.”

 

“With who?”

 

Her glance at him was answer enough. “And you should probably know that after the shift settled, we, um, could feel each other’s emotions.”

 

At that, Dr. Cho turned to him, making his hackles rise. “Is this true?”

 

Reluctant to answer, he gave her a reluctant nod.

 

The Soldier supposed Darcy’s confession was important, because Dr. Cho had a fervor in her eyes that hadn’t been there before. “I know you have had horrifying past experiences with doctors, Soldier, and you are justifiably unwilling to be examined. But it is very important to make sure that you and Darcy are not at risk after a major soul shift.”

 

It seemed as if he didn’t have a choice.

 

Stiffly, he switched places with Darcy, sitting on the examination table with his back ramrod straight. His senses spiralled, trying to keep track of everything around him.

 

The lab coat repeated the same motions they did on their previous patient. The only changes were that she wrapped his ribs, placing a cold patch on it, and announced what she was going to do to him before she followed through, checking to make sure he understood her warnings before carrying them out.

 

When she warned him they were about to give blood, it suddenly became too much. His vision tunneled, and he couldn’t fight the urge to escape.

 

He was just about to begin his fight out, but a familiar touch against his hand stopped him.

 

“Listen to my voice, dude. Breathe with me.”

 

He began matching his breaths, slowing his breathing until the shroud on his vision fully cleared and he could see Darcy’s face staring at him in concern.

 

“You’re safe,” she soothed him. “They’ll only use the blood to check to see if you’re healthy. No pain, just a light pinch.”

 

Still feeling jittery, he jerked his head.

 

A shadow moved to his side. “Keep on looking at me, dude. Look into my eyes.”

 

A slight pressure registered as the needle pierced his skin, but it was gone quickly.

 

The examination continued, but Darcy stayed where she was, and the doctors never lied about what she was about to do.

 

She took so long and yet no time at all. Once she did finish, Dr. Cho pulled up his soul level results and put it side by side to Darcy’s. Disregarding the difference in body figures, the soul readings matched perfectly; only the colors were swapped.

 

“I’ve never seen these kinds of readings,” marveled Dr. Cho. “The branching extends so far from their soulmate cores.”

 

“What does that mean?” asked Darcy.

 

Dr. Cho tapped a finger to her lips in contemplation. “Well, without a doubt, you two are soulmates. Congratulations.”

 

Their bond muted slightly with surprise at the news. The Soldier looked at the diagrams of themselves, numb. He had a soulmate? The idea was incomprehensible to him. All that talk about being less than human, not having another who he could be entwined with for the rest of their lives, was just that—talk?

 

“Even though we haven’t actually soulbonded? I thought you needed to soulbond to be soulmates,” Darcy said.

 

Dr. Cho nodded. “Yes, that is what’s considered to be the ironclad rule for the soulmate process. Curious, your situation.”

 

He turned to look at Darcy— _Darcy was his soulmate_ —and he took in her widened eyes, hands entwined together against her chest, and ever-growing smile. She was blindingly happy about the news, in spite of the mysterious circumstances.

 

That baffled him more than anything else. But looking at her, the woman who had never stopped being kind to him and put her trust in without hesitation, he knew that after this, he would never be able to let her go.

 

“Another thing that’s unique about your particular case is the extent of the branching. The majority of soulbonds are only concentrated in the chests of the soulmates, the rest only spreading out as far as their torsos. For your soulmate’s soul to be so entwined with yours is...remarkable.”

 

“Does that mean we’re in danger?” Darcy wondered.

 

“I don’t believe so,” Dr. Cho reassured. “With your permission, I’d like to confer with other experts to come up with an answer to your soulmate case. Outside of that, my initial assessment is that you are both physically healthy and your souls are in no particular danger. Your wounds will likely heal within the next few hours, Sergeant.”

 

“Are you okay with that?” Darcy asked, squeezing his hand. He would personally rather not have anyone with information on him, but that was before his entire universe shifted at the knowledge that he had a soulmate. A soulmate he had a duty to protect.

 

He gave a curt nod.

 

“Sometime in the future, Sergeant, I highly recommend that your arm and your mental health is evaluated. If necessary, I can give you a cursory psych evaluation, but psychology is not my field of expertise and mechanical engineering even less so.”

 

Before he could even think about having to deal with a shrink poking at his head and a technician poking in his arm, Darcy jumped in. “Thank you, Dr. Cho.”

 

She gave a kind nod. “Of course. If you have any other worries or concerns, please don’t be afraid to contact me. I’m usually here from morning to late afternoon every day. Feel free to use one of the Stark employee overnight rooms to rest until your apartment has been approved for habitation—Pepper insisted upon it.”

 

Soon after that, they were walking out of the damned place.

 

“Thank you for doing that. I know that was hard for you.”

 

He took a few steps before responding. “‘Least I could do with you helpin’ me through it.”

 

She grinned, her hands clasped behind her back. “‘Least I could do for my soulmate.” She seemed to savor the word.

 

With that, the total implications of their assessment caught up to him. He had a soulmate. He had miraculously found his destined partner, the one who was destined to know him better than anyone else and love him despite his flaws.

 

“Bucky?”

 

He jerked back to reality at the sound of that voice.

 

Standing in front of the elevator was the man from the bridge.

 

 _Steve_.

 

The blonde stared at him in both astonishment and hope. He stepped forward.

 

The Soldier took a step back.

 

“Bucky. It’s me. It’s Steve.”

 

“I’m not Bucky,” he managed. Bucky Barnes was a hero, something he definitely wasn’t.

 

“Yes, you are,” Steve insisted. He came even closer.

 

Darcy stepped in. “Hey, buddy. Leave off.”

 

Steve blinked, seeming to notice her presence. “Ma’am, thank you for taking care of him before I got here. I can take over now.”

 

She raised an eyebrow and cocked her hips. “Um, I think I’ll stay, unless dude over there asks me otherwise. Soulmate’s right, after all.”

 

Steve’s mouth fell open. “You’re Bucky’s soulmate?”

 

“Stop calling me Bucky,” the Soldier growled. He was tired of this game. “I’m not your friend. He died seventy years ago in the Alps.”

 

He tried to move towards the elevator, but Steve blocked his path with an almost panicked look on his face. “Where are you going?”

 

Darcy spoke up again, irritation rising within her. “Okay, one, none of your business, and two, you’re not his mother. Back off.”

 

The super soldier turned his frustration onto her. “Ma’am, please—”

 

“Oh, don’t ‘Ma’am’ me. Boundaries, man. Learn them. ‘Cause my soulmate is clearly not interested in talking to you and you need to respect that. So, if you’ll excuse us—”

 

Darcy stalked past the Captain, dragging the Soldier behind her and ignoring the man’s heartbroken expression and going into the elevator. The doors shut closed. The tension in the Soldier’s shoulders still didn’t leave.

 

“Miss Lewis, Dr. Foster is asking to see you.”

 

Darcy’s head fell back and she let out an explosive sigh. “Tell her I’m sorry but I’ll talk to her later.”

 

“I’m afraid Dr. Foster is insisting on seeing you now.”

 

She groaned and rolled her head back and forth. “Yeah, okay, fine.” She dropped her voice to a mutter only the serum in his body allowed him to hear. “If I don’t, I have a feeling she’ll hunt me down and interrogate me.”

 

The elevator ascended to a new floor.

 

She tilted her head in a way that let her peer at him sideways. “You don’t have to come with me for this, by the way. You’ve had to deal with a lot today. Go and find a—”

 

“ _Darcy Lewis!_ ”

 

Darcy winced at the shout. While talking, the elevators had already opened and a harried woman with hair falling out of her bun rushed towards them. She had stains on her hands and a wild look in her eyes. He tensed but didn’t do anything to stop her, as Darcy didn’t seem to feel any fear towards the approaching woman.

 

She hauled Darcy into a crushing hug. “Where the hell have you been? Why haven’t you responded to any of my texts or calls? I called you fourteen times and texted you three times more than that, and what do I get? Nothing! I was just about to call the conference—because that’s where you told me you were—when I heard that it got cancelled early and that you were home this entire weekend. And then I was on my phone dialing your home number when I get a notice saying that _you were attacked in your apartment_?” Her voice had risen to a shriek at that last sentence.

 

Darcy cringed sheepishly with a hint of shame flowing from her. “Janie—”

 

“Oh, don’t you ‘Janie’ me! I have been terrified for my best friend for the entire day, and my best friend had been lying to my face that she was in a boring-ass meeting and she’d rather punch herself in the face for a million years than endure it any longer! She didn’t even think about the hurt and worry that her best friend would go through when she found out the truth.”

 

“Jane.” She managed to pry herself out of Jane’s grip and grasped the woman’s shoulders. “I did so think about how you’d feel. It killed me that I lied to you and that you’d feel undoubtedly betrayed and furious at me when you found out. I didn’t want to do it. But I couldn’t. I made a promise and I didn’t want to break it at the risk of someone’s safety and my possible soulmate’s trust.”

 

At that, Jane finally noticed him and gaped at him like a fish.

 

He straightened uncomfortably, not liking the probing gaze on him.

 

“Oh,” the surprise in her voice was easily heard by the Soldier. She glanced back and forth between Darcy and him.

 

Finally, she seemed to recover. “Um, excuse us,” she told him. She dragged his soulmate several feet away, out of regular earshot range. He resisted the urge to follow. “Are you telling me that you bonded with _him_? That man over there?”

 

“Well…no…”

 

“What? Darcy, if you didn’t bond with him, then he can’t be your soulmate.”

 

“Hey, I know that! Does everybody think I wasn’t paying attention in health class? Trust me, I listened to every word of that Soul Unit. Some of my other classes, well, not so much. Besides, you should know my level of knowledge of all things soul from the results of that quiz we were forced to take by HR and Medical.”

 

“Okay, yeah, I’ll give you that.”

 

“And I distinctly remember someone getting a higher score on that than her BFF.”

 

“Okay, how was I supposed to know that branching is a thing? That’s a very small detail that’s not talked about.”

 

“I guess you could have paid better attention in health class.”

 

“Darcy!”

 

“Okay, okay, Boss Lady. Take a deep breath. We soulshifted, okay? We soulshifted when we first met, and when the doc that just checked us over looked at our soul levels, she said we were soulmates.”

 

Jane’s eyebrows creased. “But…but you’re not supposed to bond from just a soulshift.”

 

“Preaching to the choir, Janie. The doc’s trying to figure it out, but in the meantime, I’m about to pass out from exhaustion, so I’m going to take that offer of using one of the Stark employee sleeping quarters, crash for a week, and then figure out what the hell we’re going to do.”

 

Jane grasped her wrist and hands to keep her from walking away from her. “You do know who he is, right? What he is?”

 

“I know that he’s a soldier. A Sergeant, according to Natasha Romanoff and the doctor Dr. Cho.”

 

“Darcy! You don’t know who he is?”

 

At that, the Soldier’s breath halted, his arms crossing over his chest and his shoulder hunching in. This was the moment he’d dreaded since his eyes had fallen upon Darcy. That dread had only increased with the knowledge that she was his soulmate.

 

“Hey, I was waiting for when he was ready! He seemed to need the space to figure things out before opening up.”

 

“He’s the Winter Soldier, Darcy.”

 

He trembled slightly at the words, finally out in the open, nowhere to hide. He didn’t—couldn’t—look at her reaction.

 

“Who?”

 

Jane stared at her as if she had grown another head. “How is it that you are paid to know what’s going on in the world, yet you don’t know who the Winter Soldier is? He’s an assassin, Darce. The most dangerous assassin for decades. There's a rumor he killed JFK.”

 

And he waited for it. For the dawning horror to rush into her and then sucker punch him. The disgust. For him to be alone again in this cruel and merciless world.

 

But nothing happened. Startled, he actively searched for her reaction—for any reaction—and he found nothing.

 

He was too curious to continue looking away.

 

The first thing he noted was her eyes. They didn’t show any signs of shock or horror. Her mouth held no tension and her body continued to be relaxed.

 

She took the identity of her soulmate with barely a blink of an eye.

 

Now fully hunting for any kind of reaction, he scanned again for any emotion from her, only to find nothing. He couldn’t take his eyes away from her, barely breathing.

 

She said, “I’ll be on the sixteenth floor.”

 

Jane’s incredulousness was obvious. “Darcy—”

 

“I’ll talk to you later, Boss Lady. Sorry again—I’ll make it up to you later!”

 

And then she was at his side again, taking his hand again without a flinch, pulling him back to the elevator.


	5. Chapter 5

The Soldier started canvassing the room before Darcy even closed the door.

 

He scanned the spacious living room filled with comfortable furniture, the adjacent fully-stocked kitchen, and the bedrooms. When he deemed it safe, he returned to the living room to find Darcy sprawled on the couch, staring at the ceiling.

 

“What is my life?” she moaned.

 

He stood at the edge of the room, unsure of what to say, to do.

 

She hadn’t expected a response from him; she sat up and swung her legs to the floor.

 

“Fuck today. I’m flipping off today by passing out and sleeping for twelve hours. Maybe more.”

 

She hated him, then. A jumble of emotions tumbled through him. What was most present—and easily recognizable—was the self-hatred. He was worth nothing, and he had nothing to give his soulmate except horror, pain, and destruction.

 

“Stop it!”

 

Jerking at the unexpected reprimand, he flicked his gaze to his frowning soulmate. She looked at him with disapproval.

 

“Every once in awhile, you get into these self-hating moods for no apparent reason. I don’t like it.”

 

Self-conscious at being exposed so easily, he tilted his head so that his hair fell to cover his face.

 

He heard a soft shuffle, then feet padding across the wood-paneled floor. Slim fingers brushed his hair away.

 

Her expression held no pity or scorn. Only concern. “What’s wrong?”

 

His first instinct was to shut down and dismiss her question. To simply tell her to sleep like she wanted. As the Soldier, he was used to the clinical invasion of privacy when it came to his physical health. When it came to his mental state, as long as he was willing to comply and didn’t question, he was ignored. His mental fragility was scorned and suppressed whenever it appeared.

 

To have this woman in front of him be worried about all of him—physical and mental—with no hidden agendas, made something within him that was starved of contact and affection _need_. He couldn’t resist for long.

 

“Your friend is right.”

 

“Who?”

 

“Jane.” The old bitterness and anger that came to him in that warehouse after his defection returned to him. “I’m a killer. I’ve killed so many times for so long and I’m not even sure I remember all of their faces. I don’t know their names. I shouldn’t be here.” The _especially with you_ hung in the air unsaid.

 

“And what about Steve?” His mind shuddered at that name. “Is he right?”

 

He swallowed. “I’m not who he says I am anymore,” he muttered.

 

“But you agree that a long time ago, you used to be called Bucky Barnes.”

 

He reluctantly said, “I think so. But…I’m not him anymore. I don’t think I will ever be that man again.”

 

A flicker of sadness passed through her at his unsure response, followed by determination. “You don’t have to be that man again. You’ve been through some awful, horrifying shit that changed you. That’s okay. You don’t have to go back to being that man. Become the person you want to be, and don’t listen to anyone else.”

 

He stared at her for a moment, marveling at her and her optimism, her acceptance of him. “James.”

 

Her brows crinkled in confusion. “What?”

 

“I want to be James,” he clarified, the voiced declaration lifting a weight that had hung over his shoulders since he started to figure out who he was.

 

Catching his meaning, she grinned in happiness. She outstretched her hand. “Well, James, it’s very nice to meet you. I can’t wait to get to know you.”

 

As he took her hand in a firm handshake, he couldn’t help but think he couldn’t wait to meet James too.

 

******

 

“Well, first off,” Miss Potts said, “I’d like to say how relieved I am to see you safe and well. You have no idea how worried I was when I heard about what happened.”

 

Darcy, sitting in a chair opposite her, sent her a grateful look. “Thanks, Pepper. Honestly, I’m just glad I don’t need skydiving or bungee jumping on my bucket list anymore. Jumping from one roof to another was good enough for me.”

 

Eyes filled with amusement, the suave CEO got down to business. “Well, unfortunately, Hydra’s assault on your apartment, as well as your work to evade them, caused a lot of damage. A cursory inspection revealed that your apartment is, at the moment, uninhabitable. That and the fact that Hydra’s attention appears to be on you causes both the Avengers and Stark Industries to feel that it’s best for you to move into Avenger’s Tower for the unforeseeable future.”

 

James, standing behind Darcy’s seat, couldn’t see her expression at Miss Potts’ words, but he could easily sniff out her dismay and uncertainty to them.

 

Darcy asked, “You don’t think I could go back even after it’s repaired?”

 

“We have no guarantee that you wouldn’t be attacked again if you returned.”

 

Darcy gazed at a moving sculpture on the desk in thought.

 

Miss Potts continued, “Considering that you are a Stark employee and under the Avengers’ protection, you would not have any fees or rent for staying here.”

 

She faced Miss Potts again. “Well, Janie’s started to complain that she doesn’t see me as often, and I definitely won’t turn away free rent in one of the hottest real estate properties on earth. Commute’s a dream, too.”

 

“I’m happy to hear it,” Miss Potts said, pleased. Her voice lowered. “Full disclosure, though: Tony already sent movers to your apartment and picked up your belongings.”

 

“That goatee-wearing, self-righteous peacock,” Darcy said. Deep down, though, he could tell that she wasn’t truly offended by the man’s actions. It was more on the line of exasperated irritation.

 

Miss Potts laughed.

 

Unexpectedly, Darcy twisted her head back to look at him. “What about you?”

 

Caught off guard at the question, he pushed his puzzlement about her question to her. She elaborated, “Where are you staying while you find James?”

 

He had no idea where he was staying. He had no place safe to go and no clear plan as to what he was going to do in the near future. His main focus recently had been on her.

 

He let one shoulder rise and fall in a shrug.

 

She turned to Miss Potts. “Is there a place James could stay? Where he could recuperate without worrying about self-replicating, scaly assholes?”

 

Miss Potts tapped her fingers on her desk. She said carefully, “Currently, the public is unaware of your…condition and situation. For now, we would like to keep it that way. In order to do that, it is in your best interest to remain here.”

 

“That the only reason?” James said sharply.

 

Miss Potts accepted being caught in the deception with grace. “There were some who voiced their wishes for you to stay in the Avengers’ Tower.”

 

He could easily guess who she was talking about. He ignored Steve right then, thinking about the benefits and possible dangers. He knew full well that he could survive out there. That definitely reassured him.

 

_Become the person you want to be, and don’t listen to anyone else._

 

But he had taken his soulmate’s words to heart, and he wanted to do his best to follow them.

 

“Fine,” he grumbled.

 

“Fine?” Darcy repeated in shock. She hadn’t expected him to agree.

 

He raised an eyebrow at her and she backtracked. “Yeah, fine. Of course. Good for you, dude.”

 

He smothered his amusement.

 

Without any warning, Miss Potts winced and sighed, as if she knew something she dreaded was about to happen and was resigned to it.

 

Before he could wonder what had happened, a voice appeared out of nowhere. “Miss Potts, Mr. Stark wishes to see you.”

 

“Tell him I’ll be there in a bit, JARVIS,” she replied, missing the way James worked to suppress a wild shudder. He glared at the ceiling suspiciously. When he had first come into contact with JARVIS, he had thought it was a man. Darcy had told him later that JARVIS was anything but. The omnipresent computer set off dozens of his survival instincts’ alarms, even though Darcy insisted with certainty that JARVIS was completely harmless and totally cool.

 

The disembodied voice strangely seemed to hold a touch of exasperation and sadness. “Mr. Stark is insistent that he sees you now.”

 

The woman seemed to have expected that response, but was firm in her decision. “Tell him I understand his urgency, but that I believe I am needed here right now.”

 

There was a pause. James crossed his arms, curious at the hidden meaning behind the exchange. Darcy was far more obvious about her intrigue, glancing between Miss Potts’ face and the ceiling every three seconds.

 

JARVIS finally said, “Of course, Miss Potts. I have passed along your message to Mr. Stark.”

 

Miss Potts sighed, watching herself flip a pen between her fingers.

 

Darcy cleared her throat.

 

The other woman snapped out of it, focusing on Darcy and James. “Well, again, I’m glad to hear you’re both staying here. JARVIS will show you two to your rooms. Darcy, I know you’ve already talked to Maria and Nat, but Patricia wants you to talk to her by tomorrow; could you call her by then?”

 

“Yeah, totally,” Darcy stood up from her seat. “Thanks so much, Pepper.”

 

She opened her mouth to respond, but couldn’t get a word in.

 

“Miss Potts,” James flinched again, “there appears to be an incident about to occur in the marketing department. Mrs. Torres is asking for you.”

 

She pushed out of her seat. “Alright, JARVIS. I’m on my way.”

 

To James’ surprise, Miss Potts addressed him first. “Before you go, I want you to know that I'm so happy you’re home with us. What happened to you was a tragedy that never should have occurred. Please know that if you have any concerns or questions that you can come to me.”

 

Stunned, James barely registered Darcy’s gratefulness and warmth over the woman’s declaration. A tightness in his throat that felt like his airways had shrunk kept any words he had from crawling through his mouth. Giving up at any attempts to voice his thanks, he gave her a stiff nod.

 

Satisfied she had gotten her message across, Miss Potts murmured her goodbyes to Darcy and left.

 

“You okay, dude?” Darcy tilted her head at him. Despite now knowing his name, she still liked to call him dude jokingly.

 

He stared at her with his head miles away.

 

_“You’re my beautiful boy,” a woman with a kind face told him, her embrace enfolding him in the feeling of softness and love. He could smell honey and soap wafting from her skin._

 

_He heard himself say, “I love you, ‘Ma.”_

 

_She pressed a kiss to his head. “I love you too, sweetheart. Don’t you forget it.”_

 

_He hummed in agreement._

 

_“You’re going to make the world a better place. I just know it.”_

 

He blinked back tears, love and heartache overcoming him. He had just seen a memory of his mother. He was sure of it.

 

“Where’d you go?” Darcy’s voice gently invaded his senses.

 

He infinitesimally shook his head. “It doesn’t matter anymore.” He hoped she ignored the way his voice broke on the word _matter_. “I can’t go back ever again.”

 

******

 

Standing in front of the door, he tried to squash the nervousness that unwillingly bubbled up inside of him. He knew that today she had officially moved out of her old apartment.

 

He had already “moved in,” if you could call it that. He had no belongings, after all. There was nothing to unpack, nothing to decorate. The new room was simply bare.

 

The nights that followed were…long. Knowing what would come if he tried to sleep, and not completely trusting of a lack of threats within the building, he spent hours staring at a blank wall as time drudged along.

 

There were times when the exhaustion finally cornered him. The draw would be too much for him to fight and he would sink into sleep.

 

That sweet oblivion never stayed for long. Soon, there would be horror, gruesome and mercilessly chaining him there, torturing him.

 

It would feel like hours before he broke free, gasping, trembling. Tears welled in his eyes. And then he would check the clock, see only twenty minutes had gone by and fight with all his might to suppress the anguish, because however many rooms away was Darcy, slumbering peacefully in her bed, and he’d be damned if he woke her up with his nightmares.

 

He found blessed distraction in the Avengers’ gym. He walked past it one day and it caught his attention. He itched for something physical to lose himself in.

 

His desire must have been visible, because it was the first thing she talked about when her shadow fell across the floor.

 

“You can use it anytime. It’s open to all of the Avengers and residents of the Tower,” Natalia said. Her name had come to him in a sudden instant the second night.

 

He said nothing in response. He had vague impressions of his memories of her and he wasn’t ready to confront her until he had the full truth.

 

When evening fell, he was in the gym, pouring all of his energies into beating up a punching bag. He worked on it for the entire night.

 

That morning, Miss Potts had passed him by, greeting him warmly and mentioning Darcy’s move-in day. The AI soon called her attention and then she was gone again.

 

Now, he was fidgeting like a seven-year-old outside her door.

 

 _C’mon, you punk_ , he scolded himself. _Knock on the door. She won’t turn you away._

 

The door opened and he blinked at the light filtering in from the room.

 

Darcy, backlit in sunlight, glowed softly as she cocked her head at him. She was wearing ragged, loose pants and a sweatshirt. Her hair was twisted into a loose bun, and several strands of hair hung loose around her face. She smirked at him. “Well, don’t just stand there, dude. I’m in desperate need of your muscles to move some of my shit around.”

 

Relaxing at her teasing tone, he entered a room filled with stacked boxes. Some were already open and had her belongings strewn on the ground, but a majority of them were still sealed shut. She still had a lot of work to do.

 

“What do you need?” he said simply.

 

Soon, he was lifting boxes and moving them wherever she directed him. He carried around furniture and her heavier belongings. While ordering him around, she opened up boxes, sorting the contents further, placed things in their prospective home, and simply watched him. All the while, she would tell him little stories that came across her mind.

 

“One time in high school,” she told him, “I had this really awesome teacher, Mrs. Quaffel, who had this amazing end-of-the-year assignment for her AP English class—AP is advanced placement, the college-level courses for high school, by the way. Anyway, one of the assignments was to get into groups and teach the class whatever we wanted for the day. It didn’t have to do with English at all; one of the examples that had been used in the past was ‘How to Make Awesome Graffiti.’ My group and I decided to do a ‘How to Bake a Cake’ day, where people could decorate a cake we brought.”

 

She became more and more animated the more she talked. James listened with rapt attention. “The thing is, Mrs. Quaffel and I had started a prank war the day before. She warned me when we were making it that she was the Prank Queen and that I would be destroyed.” She scoffed. “Like I would back down from that challenge.

 

“Anyway, my group’s day to ‘teach’ came up, and we had a fuck awesome time. We had decided to bake the cakes beforehand and then play a game with the class to decorate them. ‘Course, that was when Quaffel executed her attack and shoved a cake in my face.”

 

James did a subtle double take. He had not expected her high school to be filled with such wildness. He expected bitterness at the memory but instead found her smiling with nostalgic amusement and wicked humor.

 

“I had to retaliate, of course. I plotted this grand elaborate plan, one that I expected to go in the history books. First, I got a teacher to open Quaffel’s room for me. Then, I pushed all of the desks to the edges of the room, set up a hundred cups filled to the brim with water on the ground, let dozens of balloons float up to the ceiling, and released twenty crickets in the room. I gleefully pictured Quaffel’s face when she walked into her room and was greeted with utter chaos.”

 

She sighed with self-deprecating humor. “Of course, the fates conspired against me.”

 

When she didn’t elaborate further, he spoke up. “What happened?”

 

Seeming to be surprised at his voiced interest in her story, she blinked at him for a minute. He raised his eyebrow—surely she didn’t think he hadn’t been paying attention—and the edge of her lip quirked up.

 

Her voice was much more subdued, but she had the same amount of mirth in her voice when she spoke again. “The next day was the only day that she missed a day of work. The poor sub that showed up freaked out at the sight that greeted her when she opened the door. The teacher that helped me took pity on the sub and directed her to a different room to teach in. The only thing was that no one cleared up my prank, and since it was a Friday, it got left there for the entire weekend. Quaffel came to the class on Monday with balloons drooping on the floor and the crickets dead.”

 

She shrugged. “So instead of the prank becoming the best one to have occurred on campus, it ended up being the best prank that epically failed.”

 

Her story did what he had thought was impossible: for a moment, he forgot the exhaustion and the fear and the darkness and cracked a smile at the thought of Darcy indignantly deflating when her prank took such an unexpected turn.

 

A noise snapped him out of it. Darcy was staring at him open-mouthed. He tried to sense her emotions through their connection, but they seemed to slip through his grasp like water. “What?” he said self-consciously.

 

“Nothing,” she replied faintly. She cleared her throat. “Do you mind handing me that box near the door right there?”

 

Puzzled but knowing that she likely wouldn’t answer him even if he pressed, he did as she asked. He hummed at her thanks and watched as she began pulling things out of the box and on to the floor.

 

His gaze landed on a framed photo and his vision tunneled. A strangled sound left him.

 

He heard Darcy say something, but was too focused on the smiling face that shook him to his core.

 

He knew that face.

 

_Running. Snow. A car crash. Red. Then, a nuclear explosion, moving through him. Changing him forever._

 

_Soulmate._

 

He was reaching for the photo before the flashes even ended. “Who… Who is this?” he asked shakily.

 

She glanced down at the photograph, then back up to him, at a loss as to what was wrong. “Uh, that’s me.”

 

The air rushed out of his lungs.

 

“Why?”

 

“I…” he continued to stare at the girl. She was beaming at the camera with the beach behind her, the sun starting to brush the sea. Her face was exactly as he recalled it. “I met her,” he said slowly. “While on an assignment. There was a car crash and she was there. Our eyes met and…”

 

Darcy was barely breathing. “And?”

 

They looked at one another. “And we bonded.” His voice was just a whisper.

 

Silence reigned.

 

Darcy broke it first.

 

“My parents told me about my time at the hospital when I was eight,” she said, her mind jumping through dozens of hoops seconds at a time. “My babysitter was taking me to a carnival, but her car crashed into another one—some big-shot political guy with his wife—and Carly and the couple in the other car died. I got a broken arm, concussion, and a bunch of bruises, apparently, but was okay enough to be able to walk to the closest pit stop. A hotel.”

 

“Apparently,” he repeated. His mind went to himself making a splint for a small arm.

 

“I couldn’t remember anything when I woke up in the hospital. Had to do with the concussion, according to the doctors. The police assumed I walked to the hotel, and no one questioned it. Now, though…” She stared off into space.

 

Now, she had to rethink what she had been told and believed for her entire life.

 

But in spite of the investigation that was likely to occur, one thing was explained. The reason why they had only soulshifted when they had first come into contact—it wasn’t the first time they had met. They had met decades ago, had tied themselves together in a way that was undeniable and unbreakable. To the point where it could bloom again so many years later.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Quick note: that story Darcy told James about the prank war? True story.


	6. Chapter 6

“How many times do I have to tell you, Birdbrain? No stealing the cookies straight from the cooling rack! It doesn’t matter whether or not they’re actually for you; it’s the principle of the matter!”

 

“That makes absolutely no sense, Dee. You announce they’re for everyone and then chew me out when I actually try to have one.”

 

“I’ve told you before, I have this pet peeve of people taking my baked goods before they’re ready. Did you not hear me the first time?”

 

“Well...I _could_ agree with you, but then we’d both be wrong. Which would be a tragedy I can’t let happen.”

 

“Oh, really? I’d like to see things from your point of view but I can’t seem to get my head that far up my ass.”

 

“I don’t have the time or the crayons to explain how wrong you are.”

 

“You know, somewhere out there is a tree, tirelessly producing oxygen so that you can breathe. I think you owe it an apology.”

 

Their endless bickering was loud enough to echo throughout the hall and draw his attention. Curious, since he knew that his soulmate wasn’t truly as furious as she sounded, he wondered about the person that inspired such childish squabbling.

 

Peeking past the door, he spied upon Darcy with a blonde man in his thirties and a band-aid on his nose pouting at her. Darcy, unamused at his antics, tapped her fingers on the counter with a tray of cookies held protectively in one hand.

 

“Rude,” he whined. “Why do you do this to me?”

 

Darcy scoffed. “Oh, please. Anyway, why are you even here? You don’t live in Avengers’ Tower.”

 

He raised one of his shoulders. “What, so that means I can’t be here? Harsh, Dee.”

 

Darcy gave him a look. “Clint.”

 

The man—Clint—gave in. “Fine, God. There’s an Avengers’ meeting today. I’m just passing the time.”

 

Darcy sighed. “And you decided to terrorize me as a result. The universe loves torturing me, doesn’t it?”

 

Clint made an outraged squawking sound.

 

Cackling at his feigned pain, Darcy turned to James, having been aware of his presence the entire time. “Hey, sorry you had to see that. Wanna cookie?”

 

Clint spluttered and was so speechless at the offense taken against him that he could only wave at the injustice in front of him.

 

Wary at the stranger but unwilling to crush the hope overflowing from Darcy, he crept into the room.

 

Accepting the cookies she shoved at him and appreciating the gooey sweetness of the treat, he eyed the blonde that had given up on his cookie excursion and retreated to the couch, sipping on a beer and glowering at the TV screen.

 

“James, Clint. Clint, James,” Darcy introduced them.

 

Clint raised his hand in greeting, but didn’t move from his spot.

 

Darcy muttered several expletives.

 

“Oh, by the way, Dee, I’ll be out of town next week for personal reasons. Pep ordered me to tell you whenever I go out.”

 

“You goin’ alone?”

 

“Nah, will have a friend with me.”

 

“You mean Kate Bishop?”

 

Clint choked on his beer. “How the hell do you know that name?”

 

“Pepper,” Darcy said as if it was obvious. “Pepper knows that my job is to take care of you heroic idiots’ reps, and in order to do my job, I need to know what the heroic idiots are up to. Or, what they could get up to, and who could be tagging along. Why haven’t I met Kate yet?”

 

“She’s been busy.”

 

Darcy didn’t believe him. “She’s been busy trying to keep your purple-clad ass alive. A heroic act in of itself. Which is why I’m downright hurt that you haven’t introduced us while you’ve been lurking around here.”

 

Clint muttered, “I’m smart enough to know better than to allow all of the women in my life to conspire against me.”

 

“Good luck with that,” a new voice said. “I’ve come to realize that it ends up happening, no matter what you do.”

 

In walked in another man—shorter, with stylish slacks and shirt and a neatly-trimmed goatee that screamed money. He held a glass of scotch in his hand.

 

“Tony,” Darcy greeted.

 

His eyes fell on each person in the room. “Kid. Hawkguy.” His attention turned to James. “The Winter Soldier.”

 

He didn’t need to hear the man’s change in tone to recognize Tony’s opinion of him. A chill crept into him, freezing the parts of him that made him vulnerable. It was the only thing that allowed him to look at Tony straight in the eye.

 

He might be aware that this man’s opinion of him was correct, but that didn’t mean it killed him every time he was reminded of it.

 

Done with passive aggressively expressing his hatred towards James, he turned towards Clint.

 

“Nat told me to get you,” he said casually. “Meeting’s apparently starting soon.”

 

Clint sighed. “Yeah, alright. Welp, see you guys later. Dee, let me know when I can actually have those cookies I can’t have.”

 

Darcy tried to retort, but the two Avengers were already gone. Tony didn’t even say a word.

 

Darcy erupted. “What the _fuck_ was that? That absolute asshole. What was his problem? I’m sorry about him; Tony will get over whatever’s bugging him soon.”

 

“Yeah,” he managed. He backed away from her.

 

“James—” She was too late, though. He was already gone.

 

******

 

He was fully aware he was hiding.

 

He found an obscure room tucked away on one of the higher floors. Looking at the stacks of boxes, he could guess it was for storage. He curled into a corner and let it all consume him.

 

He was fully aware he was hiding…and he didn’t care.

 

Yes, he wanted to be James. He wanted to find himself, to break free from the Winter Soldier and what Hydra had beaten into him.

 

A piece of that meant fully remembering every side of him. The Winter Soldier. Bucky Barnes.

 

The likelihood of him remembering every part of himself was slim to none.

 

So what was the point of even trying? The obvious answer was Darcy. But if he was never going to get all of himself back, then didn’t his soulmate deserve a life that didn’t involve a broken man?

 

The door opened and he steeled himself. He wasn’t sure who he had expected to be behind the door—a janitor, Darcy, Steve even—but he scolded himself for being surprised that Natasha Romanoff dropped to the floor in front of him. She considered him with a critical eye.

 

“Why are you here?”

 

Still assessing him, she said in a measured tone, “Why are you?”

 

Irritated at her evasion, he snapped, “Don’t try to bring this back to me. Besides, aren’t you supposed to be in a meeting?”

 

Unperturbed by his outburst, she shrugged lightly. “Meeting’s over. And I have vested interest in you.”

 

“Because of what? Steve?”

 

“He is one of them, yes,” she acknowledged.

 

“And the others?”

 

“You didn’t answer my question.”

 

“Why should I tell you?”

 

The question hung in the air, filling up any empty space in the world.

 

“Do you want to know?”

 

Of course he did. “Yes.”

 

“Decades ago, you were awoken to train potential Soviet assassins. It was called The Black Widow Program. I was one of those potential recruits.

 

“I was the best,” she said without conceit or gloat. It was fact. “And you trained me personally to make me better.”

 

This is where she shifted her position; she was nervous. “We had spent time alone enough to begin thinking beyond what was expected of us. We became…close.”

 

“How close?” he asked sharply.

 

“Let’s just say that, deep down, you know me better than a good number of my close friends have.”

 

So they had slept together. He racked his mind for any hint of their time together. “I can’t remember any of that.”

 

“Understandable. After our relationship was discovered, they made sure that you had no recollection of me. They ensured that you were so blank that the next time we met, you didn’t hesitate when you shot through me to get to my mark.”

 

She pulled her shirt enough to expose the scar that marred her hip.

 

He shuddered. “I—I’m sorry.”

 

She tugged her shirt back down. “Don’t worry about it. We both know what the life that our kind are forced to have, and the repercussions that come from trying to break from it. Ваша цель состоит в том, чтобы служить Советскому государству. Ничего больше.”

 

“Sometimes I feel I will never be free of that purpose,” he whispered.

 

“Take it from someone who’s been in your shoes before,” she responded. “The hardest thing you will ever face is looking at yourself, seeing a person, and believing you deserve all the good things in your life. But you will get there, if you accept the support that the people around you are more than happy to give.”

 

“Even Darcy?” he said in disbelief.

 

“And Steve.” She watched as he jumped up and paced across the tiny space available to him.

 

“I can’t…I can’t hurt Darcy, and I know I will if I let her close while I’m trying to heal myself. I will. And I would never forgive myself if that happened.”

 

“You’re not giving Darcy enough credit,” she commented. “She may be a civilian and untrained, but she’s not an idiot. She cares for you and will hurt more if you push her away than let her in.”

 

“How do you know?” he demanded.

 

Her eyes flickered, and her hand unconsciously went to touch the arrow necklace hanging around her neck. “Because my soulmate had been in the same shoes eleven years ago that Darcy is in now.”

 

He hadn’t expected that.

 

Her eyes were unfocused, recalling a memory from long ago. “There came a time in my life where I was…lost. I had managed to break free from my superiors’ control, and I made some…irrational decisions. Decisions that caught the attention of SHIELD. They sent their best operative to take me out.

 

“When he found me, I was disillusioned with life and my purpose. I was ready to fight and lose to the SHIELD operative. But when our eyes met, we knew, and my plan instantly fell apart.

 

“He refused to kill me after that. Instead, he made me think about what I wanted to do with my life. For once, someone let me make my own decision. And I realized I wanted to be better. So I followed him to SHIELD and he protected me so that I could become something beyond a murderer who disappeared as soon as the missions were completed. I wouldn’t be here without him.”

 

In one move, she slowly rose to her feet. “So, will you let the people who care about you in?”

 

There was a pause. Then, he took a breath.

 

“That depends,” he smirked, a confidence he didn’t know existed within him rising. “Gonna stop following me around?”

 

She mirrored his smirk. “Don’t count on it. Someone has to be sure your idiocity doesn’t get the better of you.”

 

And for the second time he could remember, he smiled. Because beneath the lightheartedness, the two Russian assassins had found common ground, and the Winter Soldier discovered that there was one more in this tower that he could trust.

 

******

 

“Doctor?”

 

She whirled around but smiled welcomingly at him. She was pleasantly surprised to see him. “Sergeant. What can I do for you?”

 

“I—” he broke off, hesitating slightly, “I need help.”

 


	7. Chapter 7

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is it! Thanks so much for everyone who's read and supported this fic... I love you all!

“Look, Brian. I know that there is some room for doubt here, but we have to be realistic and logical about this. We have to remind ourselves of the DPRK’s track record. They love to exaggerate, blow up everything out of proportion, and lie for shock value. Let us take a deep breath, talk to the reps for both sides, and get everyone together to talk about this… No, we cannot allow South Korea to panic about this, because if they do, then they’ll try to put together their own team and then the two countries will destroy each other and put a lot of people in the crossfire… Exactly… Okay, call me back as soon as you hear from them. Right, bye.”

 

Hanging up the phone, Darcy collapsed onto the couch next to him, groaning.

 

Concerned, he brushed a strand of hair off of her face.

 

Sensing his worry, she smiled through her stress, catching his hand and squeezing it assuringly.

 

“Is it…okay for me to ask?”

 

“More than okay,” she hummed. “Just exasperated at the amount of ego that gets involved in international relations. I swear, if countries could compare their dicks, then they would let their people starve and kill each other because they’re too busy arguing that theirs is bigger.”

 

He snorted at the imagery.

 

Watching him with a look on her face, she said distractedly, “North Korea decided that since the US has a superpowered team at their disposal, which isn’t one-hundred percent true since the government has no say in the Avengers’ decisions, then they should too. So they’ve announced that they have a team of powered people that are ready to destroy the United States, its allies, and the enemies of the State.

 

“So now everyone’s freaking out about the North waging war on everyone and their uncle. The South is totally shitting themselves and are looking into putting together a team for themselves, which would just make the situation even more of a fuck-fest, so I’m trying to get everyone calmed down, which would be a miracle in and of itself.”

 

James shook his head. That sounded like a disaster waiting to happen.

 

Darcy continued, “If this doesn’t work out within the next day or so, I’m going to have to go out to DC to help coordinate a strategy while Pamela heads to the border.”

 

He tensed. “You’re leaving?”

 

She instantly picked up on his distress. “Oh, well…I don’t know for sure.”

 

“But you think you will.”

 

She pursed her lips. “Yes,” she said boldly, knowing it was pointless to lie.

 

His heart clenched. He might have been paranoid about the safety of the Tower for the past couple of weeks but he knew that the Tower was leagues better than any “secure” location in DC. And he would be miles away from her, unable to help, if something went wrong.

 

“I would have Stark Industries security with me the entire time and the only places I’d be would be in some boring-ass government building and my hotel. And then I’d be back.”

 

So many things could go wrong in a government building and hotel.

 

“Look, don’t worry about it right now,” she tried to distract him. “I don’t even know for sure if it’s going to happen.”

 

And she let him divert him, pushing away his troubled thoughts for another time. Because there was nothing he could do about it now and if he did, he’d work himself up until he went crazy.

 

“Anyway,” she changed the subject, “it sounds as if I also have to watch over Earth’s Mightiest Heroes as they trek across the world trying to find Loki’s scepter.”

 

“Who’s Loki?”

 

She did a double-take. “What—Oh sweet Heimdall, you completely missed the Battle of New York, didn’t you?”

 

Every day he was reminded of how much he had missed over the years. “What’s the Battle of New York?”

 

She explained to him.

 

He shook his head in disbelief. “And that was how the Avengers got together?”

 

“Yup,” she popped the “p.”

 

“Bunch of idiots,” he muttered.

 

She laughed. “Pretty much. But enough about my work. How are you doing?”

 

He shrugged. “Fine.”

 

“How’s the therapy going?”

 

“Better than it was before.” He flipped the remote in the air before catching it. “It was awkward as hell the first couple of times, but…it’s gotten better.” He doesn’t go further than that. The therapy sessions were private, and she was respectful enough not to ask.

 

A knock interrupted their conversation.

 

She sent him a pleading look and he gave in instantly, rising to open the door to her apartment.

 

When he pulled the door open, the man on the other side was too immersed in the papers he was holding to notice who had answered the door.

 

“Hey, Darce,” Steve said absently. “So Hill just gave me some possible directives for the Avengers if the situation with North Korea escalates. Could I go over—”

 

He looked up and froze. The two men stood there, suspended in time, unsure of what to do.

 

James didn’t know what to say. The last time he had talked to him…well, he had just come in from the cold. He had said a lot of words that he knew wasn’t true now. And he was so thankful that he was able to see his best friend again.

 

Steve shifted awkwardly. “Um, I’ll come back later—”

 

“No,” James interrupted.

 

Steve stilled.

 

“No,” he said softly. He opened the door wider. “Come in.”

 

As Steve stepped in, James glanced into the room to see that Darcy had disappeared, likely to give them privacy.

 

Steve cleared his throat. “So…how are you doing?”

 

His arms clicked as it went through its settings. “Good.”

 

Silence fell again.

 

They both broke it at the same time.

 

“Buck—”

 

“Steve—”

 

They stopped and the tension rushed out of the air. Steve chuckled and James gripped the back of his neck sheepishly.

 

Steve tried again. “Look, Buck, I’m sorry I tried to push you into something you’re not ready for. It was wrong of me. The fact that you’re here safe is more than I could ask for.”

 

“Damn punk,” James said fondly. “Always tryin’ to give the people around him more, regardless if they want it.”

 

The blonde grinned. “Well, they definitely deserve it if they’re putting up with me.”

 

James rolled his eyes. “Look, I’m sorry ‘bout how I acted when I first got here. I was in a bad place—still am, really—but I know now that I can be better and people are here to help me.”

 

“I’m glad you know that,” Steve said softly. “How’d you come to that?”

 

“Partly Darcy. Partly Natalia. Partly Dr. Qi.”

 

“Great people helping you. Especially Darcy.”

 

James warmed at the mention of her.

 

Steve must have noticed because he beamed at him. “You happy?”

 

Feeling somewhat vulnerable, he averted his gaze. “We’re not—we’re not _together_. I don’t think I can—”

 

“That doesn’t matter,” Steve’s voice was firm. “Are you happy?”

 

His mind went to their time in her apartment, the quiet nights spent with just her voice reading, soothing him. Her steadfast support whenever he felt cornered and panic-stricken. The warmth of her embrace of his soul.

 

“Yes.” The word was faint, but strong in its conviction.

 

“I’m happy for you,” Steve repeated.

 

His body shifted towards the door. “I was planning on getting lunch upstairs. Join me?”

 

“Yeah. That’d be nice.”

 

When they walked out the door, Steve clapped James on the shoulder. The two were finally reunited.

 

******

 

James felt a bead of sweat trail down his neck and get absorbed into his shirt as he blocked Steve’s punch and sent a fist flying towards Steve’s neck. Steve dodged then jabbed at James’ stomach. He blocked the attack.

 

They continued their spar for an hour, trading punches and kicks. All the while, Steve kept a conversation going that James indulged him in.

 

“Tony’s slowly cooling off,” Steve told him. “Everybody’s been keeping him busy with Avengers’ business, and Pepper’s been talking to him about it.”

 

“Must be a good distraction,” James grunted. He took a hit to the shoulder and retaliated with a strong chokehold.

 

Steve managed to break away and elbowed him in the face. “It is. You heard of Loki?”

 

“Darcy told me about him.”

 

“Well, the scepter that powered his tricks and opened up the portal over New York is missing, and we’ve been working on recovering it. Banner and Stark have been trying to track it down.”

 

“Got any leads?”

 

“A couple. We’re planning on following up on them soon. Plus, we’ve got the problem with DPRK.”

 

A shadow passed over James’ face.

 

Steve noticed. “You know Darcy will be fine on that trip. She knows how to handle the politics, and someone will be with her every step of the way.”

 

“I know that.” He threw a vicious strike into Steve. The blonde staggered back a step.

 

Thankfully, Steve didn’t push. “Okay.”

 

******

 

James paused in his search for a shirt when he heard a knock at the door and noted a hum within him. He went to get the door.

 

Darcy was fiddling with the strap of her bag over her shoulder. When she looked up at him, she stilled. The flutter of want bowled him over, and he couldn’t help echo back panic, confusion, happiness, and desire. That last one surprised him the most; he had forgotten about desire and women and pleasure in the years he had been with Hydra. But, at the hint of his soulmate’s attraction to him, it was like a dam had burst and he thought _Oh_.

 

Darcy’s face was as red as a tomato. “I’m so sorry, I didn’t mean to—”

 

“Don’t apologize,” he cut in. Then doubt crept in. “Unless you don’t actually—”

 

“No,” her response was quick and emphatic. “Definitely not. It’s just—” She hesitated. “I know that you’ve got a lot on your plate, and while you’re slowly finding yourself again, I didn’t want to put any pressure on you.”

 

A hot curdle of anger rose, covering up the hurt and pain. She shouldn’t have to deal with his fucked up issues. “Pressure?” he repeated.

 

She tried to backtrack. “No—”

 

“Because I’m just that unstable. A ticking time bomb.” His eyes lowered to the floor and the feeling that he wouldn’t control himself made him clench his fists.

 

“That’s not true.”

 

“It is and you know it,” he glanced at her.

 

“Okay, well, even if it was true, so what? You’ve overcoming what Hydra—and can I just take the time to emphasize again that it was _Hydra_ , not you—made you into.”

 

“But I _did_ do it.”

 

“Oh, shut the hell up and get over yourself,” Darcy snapped, angry now. “You need to accept that there were some things that happened that were beyond your control. You keep on pulling and pushing away people and I refuse to lose my soulmate after discovering that I wasn’t a freak without one after all—”

 

His world stopped for a second. Darcy clapped a hand to her mouth.

 

“What are you talking about?” he demanded, his attention now fully diverted.

 

Darcy slowly lowered her hand. “Forget it,” she muttered. She crouched slightly to grasp the bag at her feet. “Look, I just came over to see you before I left. I’ll likely be back next week.”

 

“Wait,” he reached out to keep her from turning.

 

She stopped, but still refused to look at him. “I’ll see you next week.”

 

She fled and he was too stunned, too confused to think about stopping her again.

 

******

 

For the next three days, all he could do was wonder about his last talk with Darcy.

 

_I refuse to lose my soulmate after discovering I wasn’t a freak without one after all._

 

Why would she have thought she wouldn’t have a soulmate? There was a soulmate for every person on Earth. Beyond Earth, even, when you considered Thor.

 

So then why would Darcy think she was different?

 

His preoccupation with answering that question warred with his worry of her safety. He would work out in the gym, go see Dr. Qi, and hung out with Steve, but he wasn’t completely there. A part of him was always occupied with his soulmate.

 

Dr. Qi had detected his pensiveness. During one of their sessions, she simply said, “Whenever you’re ready to talk about what’s bothering you, I’m here.”

 

Natalia, being the spy that she was, had observed his change in behavior too.

 

She appeared on the fourth day of Darcy’s trip dressed in workout clothes and ready to spar. Neither of them said anything, just stood there, waiting, before one of them made the first move and then they were off. Natalia’s fighting style was different from Steve’s. Steve was more of a kick, punch, and take-the-hit-straight-on-when-it-comes fella. Natalia, on the other hand, attacked when you didn’t see it coming. She would dance away from your attack, then strike like a snake—wrapping around your neck and squeezing the life out of you. James found himself needing to focus in order to adjust to the change in opponent, and found the fight to have kept its promise as a blessed distraction.

 

Until she started talking, of course.

 

“You seem tenser than usual,” she commented, evading a hit and aiming a kick at his torso. He grunted and ignored her attempt at trying to get him to open up.

 

Like that was going to work.

 

“It has nothing to do with your sessions with Qi,” she continued, knocking him off balance with a swipe at his feet. “And Steve is walking around as if someone had told him Hydra had been obliterated from the Earth, so it doesn’t have to do with Steve. That only leaves Darcy.”

 

“Leave it alone, Natalia,” he snarled, regaining his balance and initiating a counter attack that left her pinned to his chest. In response, she snapped her head back, catching him in the cheekbone. She took advantage of the brief loosening of his grip, and suddenly she was free. He felt a sharp burst of pain from his jaw and she launched an all-out assault on him.

 

Frustrated in more ways than he wanted to admit, he lashed back, attempting to regain control of the situation. He failed miserably. Within thirty seconds, he was on his back with one of her hands at his throat and the other poised to strike.

 

Knowing he was defeated, he batted away her hands and sat up when she got off him. She flopped back to sit in front of him.

 

“Spit it out,” she told him.

 

“No,” he said almost reluctantly. He hated that she was pushing but didn’t know how to deter her apart from tattling to Steve. The last thing he wanted was Steve learning there was something else putting him in a mood besides Darcy’s absence. And he had a feeling that the spy sitting in front of him would have no issues with tattling back. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

 

Moving back to lean her weight on her hands, she regarded him straight on. He could see her searching for the best route to take. She must have settled on one, because she tried again. “You know that I understand how important Darcy is to you.”

 

That was without question. One morning, he had stumbled across her and her soulmate Barton making breakfast. Even with the way they teased each other and fought over the ingredients they wanted in their omelettes, it was palpable that they loved each other fiercely. They were so attuned to each other’s movements that it felt as if they had rehearsed the entire thing. After the omelettes were plated, they stole bits of the other’s meal while watching some show James hadn’t recognized. They were in love in a way that James had wished for back when he was Bucky.

 

“And you know that I want you to be happy.”

 

His eyes moved to look at her, slightly disbelieving. “Even when I’ve hurt you so much?”

 

Her lips twisted. “We were both slaves to others,” she said, “with no way to get out. You had no choice.”

 

He stared unseeingly at the punching bag hanging in the corner.

 

She returned back to their main conversation. “You’re in a much different position with Darcy. You have the power to do what’s necessary to make or break your relationship with your soulmate. But it’s up to you to make the effort to do so.”

 

With her words rose an insecurity he couldn’t escape. “And what if what I have isn’t enough?”

 

A male voice answered him. “Then you accept the fact you tried your best and you move on.”

 

Surprised at the unexpected guest, James looked behind Natalia to find Steve’s new friend—the one with the wings—leaning against the frame of the door. “Don’t believe we’ve officially met when you weren’t an off-your-rocker assassin,” he offered. ”Sam Wilson.”

 

He tilted his head in wary acknowledgement.

 

“You have some words of wisdom you can impart upon Barnes here, Wilson?” Natalia tilted her head.

 

Sam hummed but didn’t talk for a moment, gathering his thoughts. When he started speaking, his words were slow but spoken with care. “There’s this idea society refuses to give up. Says that all soulmates are romantically involved and there’s a guaranteed happily ever after. We see it all the time in TV shows, movies, books, you name it. But the reality is, most soulmates are simply the best friend they’ve ever had or will ever get. Or they’re the ideal roommate. Or sometimes it’s the person they hate most in the world, and they never reconcile, their bond broken so much it’s beyond fixing. Sometimes it starts like it does in the movies but then it all goes south. It happens all over.”

 

A cold feeling crept into his stomach. Is that what would happen to him and Darcy? What his damning past and the years spent apart would do to their bond?

 

Sam snorted. “Dude, get a grip. Your relationship with Darcy will be fine. But like Nat said: you can’t just do nothing if you think something is wrong; otherwise, it will be.”

 

“But I don’t know what to do,” he confessed. “She...she said something about believing she didn’t have a soulmate.”

 

His two companions both blinked. “‘Didn’t have a soulmate’ as in thought her soulmate had died or as in actually didn’t have one?” Sam asked, his eyebrows raised.

 

“It sounded like the second one.”

 

Sam’s mouth opened and closed. Natasha looked as if she had an extremely difficult puzzle that wasn’t solving itself. Abruptly, she called out, “JARVIS.”

 

“Yes, Miss Romanoff?”

 

“Put me on with Dr. Cho, please.”

 

“Of course. Connecting…”

 

A repetitious buzzing sounded before it cut off. “Hello, Miss Romanoff. What can I do for you?”

 

“I was wondering about something. Have there been cases where soulmates have bonded but forgot about it?”

 

James sucked in a breath.

 

“There are a few,” the doctor responded. “It’s a rare occurance, so there’s not much on record for those cases.”

 

“What happened in those cases?”

 

Dr. Cho hummed. “Let me pull them up…Here we go. Well, the main worry doctors have is the soul stretching. It’s a major concern in cases like this because they don’t know their souls are going through such an immense strain and therefore don’t think of the symptoms. It’s even worse for those soulmates whose exchange didn’t complete before they parted. When that happens, they can’t feel the strain on their souls.”

 

“So, in effect, these people live their lives unaware that they’ve soul exchanged, can’t feel any of the effects that would indicate they have one, and don’t feel any of the symptoms of being bonded,” Natalia stated.

 

“That pretty much covers it,” she agreed. “That’s why it’s such an issue; couples suddenly die of complications without any warning and their families never know that they had soulbonded. If I may ask, why the focus on these particular situations?”

 

“No particular reason,” the spy said breezily. “Thank you for your time.” With that, she shut down the link.

 

James’ hands cradled his head as the implications whirled around in his head. “That means…”

 

Natalia cut him off. “It means that Darcy grew up without any of the usual urges that come from being unbonded—the urges, the pining, the wanderlust—and likely wondered why she was different. You didn’t have that issue because when you weren’t in stasis; you were on assignments and were told you didn’t have a soulmate in the first place. ”

 

In an instant, James was up and his fist was in the wall. It didn’t do anything to ease the wild hatred heating his blood and speeding his heartbeat. He suddenly had a flash of a little Darcy lying in front of a closed door with a splint supporting her arm and snow falling around her.

 

Regret slammed into him, making him boneless, sliding along the wall until he was on his knees. He stared emptily at the wall. Everything was still and he felt eyes upon his hunched figure.

 

He spoke to everyone and no one. “Why? Why her? How could something like this happen to her? She is the last person to deserve this.”

 

Someone spoke, “No, she doesn’t. But it happened. And while you can think of all these ‘what if’ scenarios and think of how much better off Darcy would be with a different soulmate, it won’t help now. Focus on the present and the future of your relationship with Darcy.”

 

An almost imperceptible mark that blemished the wall caught his eye. He stared at it until it became all he could see.

 

And sometime between his time searing the image of that mark into his brain, the novels of his companions clicked in his head. What had happened to Darcy wasn’t fair but James had figured out the world wasn’t fair a long time ago. All he could focus on now was his hell-bent desire to do anything to make Darcy happy, because she was his soulmate and he had decided when he had first laid eyes on her—before he even realized it himself—that he couldn’t let her go. And the first step to his goal was to get his head out of his ass, listen to what she had been trying to tell him all along, and show her what she meant to him. That he would never abandon her.

 

Feeling resolved now, James couldn’t help but chuckle dryly. “You two are damned good. I swear to God, did you rehearse this?”

 

He managed to turn around in time to see the two of them cock their eyebrows. “All the time,” Sam quipped. “Steve’s a good practice dummy.”

 

James snorted but sobered quickly at the reminder of what they had done for him. “Thank you.”

 

Natalia’s meaningful but impassive look matched Sam’s, “Anytime, man. Now let’s get some ice for those knuckles.”

 

******

 

When he heard the click of the lock, he felt a telltale clench in his gut. Doing his best to ignore it, he slowly rose from his seat on her couch.

 

The door burst open and Darcy spilled through the door, breathing life into his own and a smile to his face. Cursing at losing her grip on her bag, she had to balance her other bag hanging in the crook of her elbow of one arm and a bag of groceries in the other in order to reach the keys she had dropped. Successfully snatching the keys up, she hefted herself and her load up and headed towards the kitchen.

 

“James,” she said breathlessly, “what are you doing here?”

 

He masked his surprise. _Of course she knew you were there, punk, you’re soul bonded_. He took a hesitant step towards her. “Can we talk?”

 

Darcy began setting down her bags. Even with her face turned away from him and his insight into her emotions, he could tell she was discomforted.

 

“In all of this…mess,” he began clumsily, “I didn’t consider the impact the nature of what happened to us would have had on your life. Which isn’t an excuse; I should have realized it as soon as we figured out what had happened during our first encounter.” He was getting off track. “But that’s not the point. The point is, I understand now.”

 

Darcy wrangled her fingers together, only her side visible to him. “Understand…”

 

James swallowed. “I understand that you thought you were a freak,” he said gently, “your body acted so differently compared to what everyone said it should and you thought you’d be teased and bullied and thought of as different because that’s what people do.”

 

Darcy now had her arms tightly wound around herself. He tentatively reached out to extricate her hands from her grip. He held them tightly within his hold. “I’m so sorry you had to go through that,” he said, his remorse dripping from every word of his apology. That regret would likely be with him for a long time.

 

At that, Darcy raised her head and, despite not moving a single step, drew closer to him and their connected hands. “That wasn’t your fault,” she said fiercely. She placed no blame on him and never would. His breath hitched at the sight.

 

“Maybe not, but someone had to apologize for the shitty deal you got dealt.”

 

She huffed in exasperation.

 

“I may never understand what you had to go through, but I want you to know something.” He stared intently at her, needing for her to be unable to doubt what he was about to say. “You are not a freak. You are perfect in every way, shape, and form and I will never stop thanking the unfair universe for letting me share my life with you. You deserve every bit of affection and to be shown how gorgeous and fucking beautiful you are. You deserve to be adored and loved by your soulmate. And maybe sometime in the future, if or when I became James, we can try to explore that. If you want to, of course. We don’t have to do it or anything and who knows if we’d ever get to that point.” He winces. _Goddammit_. He ran a hand over his face. “Shit, I’m bad at this,” he muttered.

 

A smile tugged at Darcy’s lips, her eyes filled with affection. “That’s okay. You’re trying, which is more than I can say for some of the previous guys I’ve been with.” She winced. “I’m sorry, you don’t want to hear about—”

 

“It’s alright, doll,” he said, the nickname suddenly coming as naturally as breathing. “You didn’t know and I definitely don’t have any claim over you. You’re your own person.”

 

“What if I don’t want to be?” She stepped forward. “I mean, I’m all for the feminist movement and being equals as man and woman. But a part of you is in me and me in you and I didn’t mean to make that sound as sexual as it does.“ He couldn’t help but laugh at that. “My point is, we’re connected in a way that we won’t be with anyone else. And I wouldn’t have it any other way.”

 

At that, he cradled her head with his hands oh, so gently, and the look of wonder and joy on her face caused him to close the distance between them and kiss her.

 

And as the bond between their souls exploded in a way that made him forget about the scars from his past and everything around him, he realized that Darcy had given him more than he had realized. Not only had she brought him from the cold and given him the ability to heal and think of the future, she had given him something far more precious.

 

Hope.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm beyond stoked to tell you that I've been working on a new fic for the past few months! Seriously, I'm vibrating in my seat while talking about it, I'm so excited. I won't tell you much about it other than it's another AU and it's unlike anything you've read in this ship. Speaking of it, if anyone is interesting in betaing my new fic, please message me!
> 
>  **AN IMPORTANT NOTE!!!!!!!!!!** I have switched psueds after this update; please subscribe to [infinisei](http://archiveofourown.org/users/sparkjolt/pseuds/infinisei) to get a notice when I post the new work, as I won't be posting anything new under sparkjolt unless I expand on the Hold My Breath 'Verse. Thanks so much everyone!!!

**Author's Note:**

> Any love you give me warms the cockles of my heart (and makes me want to write even more)!!! Also, stay tuned on my [Tumblr account](https://infinisei.tumblr.com/) for news about this series and excerpts of future chapters. See you next week...


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